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GAIL HAMILTON'S WRITINGS. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

One Volume. 



GALA-DAYS. 

One Volume. 



COUNTRY LIVING AND COTJNTEY THINKING. 

One Volume. 



The above are published in uniform style, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 



New Atmosphere 



BY 



GAIL HAMILTON, 



M/UUjl^ 



AUTHOR OF "country LIVING AND COUNTRY THINKING, 
*'GALA days," AND " STUMBLING-BLOCKS." 



•/■ 




< 



7 



BOSTON: 
TICK NOR AND FIELDS 

1865. 



.HA- 



Entered accordiDg to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



A New Atmosphere. 



I 




^^r VITIATED atmosphere is fatal to 
healtliy development. One may be ever 
so wise, learned, rich, and beautiful, but 
if the air he breathes is saturated with 
fever, pestilence, or any noxious vapor, nothing 
will avail him. The subtile malaria creeps into 
his inmost frame, looks out from his languid eye, 
settles in his sallow cheek, droops in his totter- 
ing step, and laughs to scorn all his learning and 
gold and grandeur. He must rid himself of the 
malaria, or the malaria will rid itself of him. 

There are many evils in the world, deep-seated 
and deleterious. I rejoice to see noble men and 
w^omen working at the overthrow of these old 
Dagons ; but the processes are many and long. 
Grievances are suffered which can be redressed 
only by the repeal of old and the enactment of 
new laws. Health suffers from ignorance w^hich 
scientific discoveries, patient observation, and cor- 

1 A 



2 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

rect reasoning must dispel. Religion suffers from 
a narrowness and shallowness which broader and 
deeper culture must remove. Heaven send the 
laws, the science, and the culture, for these ills are 
indeed sore and of long continuance ; but we need 
not wait upon the slow steps of law" and science. 
Every man and woman can begin at this moment 
a renovation. Behind all law and all literature, 
the very air we breathe, the moral atmosphere not 
of books and benches only, but of kitchen and 
keeping-room, is impure and unwholesome. The 
interests of humanity demand a purification. 

What I am going to say may have been said 
before ; but if so, the present condition of things 
shows that it has been said to too little purpose. 
I have myself glanced at it askance, but I have 
never looked it square in the face. I have spoken 
ships bound to my port, but not freighted with 
my cargo. Success to them all ! There is sea- 
room for every keel, and use for all their treasures. 
I am so far from claiming to be original, that I 
rather marvel there is any necessity for my being 
at all. The truths which I design to illustrate lie 
so on the surface that I should suppose they would 
commend themselves to the most casual notice. 
I can account for the obscurity which seems to 
enshroud them only by supposing that the days 
of Eli have reached down to us, and that there 
is no open vision. Therefore the truth needs 
to be repeated, and repeated in different forms 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 3 

and tones, if it is to be made effectual to the pull- 
ing down of strongholds. I will do my part of 
the reiteration. If I can state no new truths, I 
will at least help to ring the old truths into the 
ears of this generation till every unjust judge shall 
moan in bitterness of soul, " Though I fear not 
God nor regard man, yet, because these women 
trouble me, I will avenge them, lest by their con- 
tinual coming they weary me." 

In pursuance of my plan, it will be necessary for 
me sometimes to recur more than once to the same 
topic; but the repetition involved will be more 
apparent than real. It will be such repetition as 
the multiplication-table displays, whose first column 
gives you two times four, its third four times two, 
its fourth four times five, and so on to the end. 
You have the same figures, but in different combi- 
nations. I shall bring forward the same facts, but 
they will be presented under different lights, and 
will bear upon different conclusions. 

I shall also, without hesitation, discuss topics 
on which I have spoken at former times, but with- 
out perceiving all their relations. No architect 
would reject stones which were necessary to the 
symmetry of his building because he had previ- 
ously used them for other purposes. 

I shall touch upon many and diverse themes; 
but nothing wdll be irrelevant. An atmosphere 
embraces the whole globe, and nothing human is 
foreign to it. 



4 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

One person may not succeed in dispelling all 
the miasms of the earth, but if he can only cleanse 
one little corner of it, if he can but send through 
the murky air one cool, bracing, healthy gale, he 
will do much better than to sit under his vine, 
scared by the greatness of the evil and the dig- 
nity of those who support it. 




II 




HE laws and customs regarding the 
education of girls and the employ- 
ment of women may be wrong and 
difficult of righting ; but a more ele- 



^^m^^=^^ 



mental wrong, and one that lies within reach of 
every parent, is the coarse, mercenary, and revolt- 
ing tone of sentiment in wdiich girls are brought 
up and in which women live, entirely apart from 
their technical education and employment. I re- 
fer now to the refined and educated, as w^ell as, 
and indeed more than, to the rude and illiterate, 
for it is their altitude which determines the level 
of all below. This tone of sentiment is such as 
to diminish girls' self-respect, mar their purity, 
and dwarf their being. They inhale, they imbibe, 
they are steeped in the idea, that the great busi- 
ness of their life is marriage, and if they fail to 
secure that they will become utterly bankrupt and 
pitiable. Naturally this idea becomes their ruling 
motive ; all their course is bent to its guidance ; 
and from this idea and this course of action spring 



6 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

crime, and sorrow, and disaster, " in thick array 
of depth immeasurable." 

In this and in many other instances you will 
doubtless think that I overstate the truth. Look- 
ing into an empty bucket, you would say the air is 
colorless ; looking into the depths of the atmos- 
phere, you see that it is blue. I am not writing 
about a bucket, but about the atmosphere. 

Viewing the circumstances which form women, 
t02:ether with the women who are formed bv them, 
one is filled with astonishment at the indwelling 
dignity and divinity of the womanly nature ; and 
the thought can but arise, if a flower so fair can 
spring from a soil so badly tilled, what graceful and 
glorious growths might we not see did art but 
combine with nature to produce the conditions of 
the highest development ! We lament heathen- 
dom, but much of our spirit is essentially heathen- 
ish. Little girls see in their geographies pictures 
of Circassian fathers selling their daughters to 
Turkish husbands, and they think it very inhuman 
and pagan. But, little girls, your fathers will 
traffic in you without scruple. Matters will not 
be managed in quite so business-like a fashion, but 
such a pressure will be brought to bear upon you 
that you will have very little more spontaneity 
than the Circassian slave who looks so pitiful in 
the geography book. At home you will hear your- 
self talked about, talked at, and talked to, in such 
a manner that you will have no choice left but to 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 7 

marry. It is expected and assumed. I do not 
mean girls who are to snatch their unhappy fathers 
from exposure and disgrace by a rich and hated 
marriage. Such things belong to ballads. We 
are dealing now with life. I have seen girls, — 
respectable, well-educated, daughters of Christian 
families, of families who think they believe that 
man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him 
forever, who profess to make the Bible their rule 
of faith and practice, to eschew the pomps and 
vanities of this world, and consecrate themselves to 
the Lord, — who are yet trained to think and talk 
of marriage in a manner utterly commercial and 
frivolous. Allusions to and conversations on the 
subject are of such a nature that they cannot re- 
main unmarried without shame. They are taught, 
not in direct terms at so much a lesson, like music 
or German, but indirectly, and with a thorough- 
ness which no music-master can equal, that, if a 
woman is not married, it is because she is not 
attractive, that to be unattractive to men is the 
most dismal and dreadful misfortune, and that for 
an unmarried woman earth has no honor and no 
happiness, but only toleration and a mitigated or 
unmitigated contempt. 

What is the burden of the song that is sung to 
girls and women? Are they counselled to be 
active, self-helpful, self-reliant, alert, ingenious, 
energetic, aggressive ? Are they strengthened to 
find out a path for themselves, and to walk in it 



8 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

unashamed? Are they braced and toned up to 
solve for themselves the problems of life, to bear its 
ills undaunted and meet its happinesses unbewil- 
dered? Goto! Such a thing was never heard of. 
It is woman's rights ! It is strong-minded ! It is 
discontented with your sphere ! It is masculine ! 
Milton and St. Paul to the rescue ! 

*< For contemplation he, and valor formed, 
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace." 

So "she" is urged to cultivate sweet attractive 
grace by acquainting herself with housework, by 
learning to sew, and starch, and make bread, to 
be economical and housewifely, and so a helpmeet 
to the husband who is assumed for her. This is 
the true way to be attractive, she is informed. 
" Men admire you in the ball-room," say the men- 
tors and mentoresses, " but they choose a wife from 
the home-circle/' Marriage is simply a reward of 
merit. Do not be extravagant, or careless, or bold, 
or rude, for so you will scare away suitors. Be 
prudent, and tidy, and simple, and gentle, and 
timid, and you will be surrounded by them, and 
that is heaven, and secure a husband, which is the 
heaven of heavens. A flood of stories and anec- 
dotes deluges us with proof. Arthur falls, in 
love with beautiful, romantic, poetic, accomplished 
Leonie, till she faints one day, and he rushes into 
her room for a smelling-bottle, and finds no harts- 
horn, but much confusion and dust, while plain, 
Molly's room is neat and tidy, and overflows with 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 9 

hartshorn ; whereupon he falls out of love with 
Leonie, in with Molly, and virtue and vice have 
their reward. Or Charles pays a morning visit, 
and is entertained sumptuously in the parlor by 
Anabel, and Arabel, and Claribel, and Isabel, in 
silk, while Cinderella stays in the kitchen in calico 
and linen collar. But Charles catches a glimpse 
of Cinderella behind the door, and loves and 
marries the humble, grateful girl, to the disap- 
pointment and deep disgust of her flounced and 
jewelled sisters. Or Jane at the tea-table cuts 
the cheese-rind too thick, and handsome young 
Leonard infers that she will be extravagant ; Har- 
riet pares it too thin, and that stands for niggardli- 
ness ; but Mary hits the golden mean, and is re- 
warded with and by handsome young Leonard. 
Or a broomstick lies in the way, over which Clara, 
Anna, Laura, and the rest step unheeding or in- 
different, and only Lucy picks it up and replaces 
it, which Harry, standing by, makes a note of, and 
Lucy is paid with the honor of being Harry's wife. 
Moral: Go you and do likewise, and verily you 
shall have your reward, or at least you stand a 
much better chance of having it than if you do 
differently. " Be good, and you will be married," 
is the essence of the lesson. 

Laying aside now all question of the dignity and 
delicacy of such proceedings, assuming for the time 
that it is the proper course, let us notice whether 
it is followed out to its conclusions. Not in the 



10 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

least. Having done its best to transpose the fem- 
inine raw material into the orthodox texture and 
pattern of " good wives," society lays it on the 
shelf to run its own risk of finding a purchaser. 
It neither provides husbands for the " good wives " 
which it has made, nor suffers them to go and look 
up husbands for themselves. If a girl is ready to 
enter service, she can enroll her name at the intel- 
ligence office. If she is prepared to teach, she 
sends to the '' Committee." If she desires to be a 
saleswoman, she apphes at the different shops ; but 
your " good wife " candidate must wait patiently, 
— not the grand old theological " waiting in the use 
of means," but the Micawber waiting for something 
to turn up. She has learned the bread-making 
and the clear-starching ; she is mistress of domestic 
economy ; she is familiar with all the little details 
of puddings and preserves ; she is ripe for wife- 
hood and green for all else, and now she wants 
an arena for the exercise of her skill. But she 
would better pull her tongue out at once than say 
so. People may talk to girls at pleasure of the 
fair domestic realm where they will be queen, of 
the glory of such a kingdom, and the unsatisfying 
emptiness of any and every other ; but no crime 
is more fatal to a girl's reputation and prospects 
than the suspicion of husband-hunting. That fate, 
that career, that glory, which has been constantly 
mapped out to her as the very Land of Promise, 
the goal of her ambition, the culmination of her 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, n 

happiness, is the one fate, the one career, the one 
glory, which she must not lift an eyelash to 
secure. Let a girl, the very same girl whom 
you have been pushing through a course of the 
received proper training, be supposed to set but so 
much as a feather on her hat, a smile on her lips, 
a tone in her voice, to attract the admiration which 
she has been constantly taught is the guerdon of 
all the virtues, — and her reputation sinks at once 
to zero. " Trying to get a husband," whether 
couched in the decorous phrase of polite society, or 
in the uncompromising language of more primitive 
circles, is the death-warrant of a girl's good name. 
She must sedulously prepare herself for a position 
to which she must be totally indifferent. She 
must learn all domestic accomplishments, but she 
must take no measures, she must exhibit no symp- 
toms of a desire to secure a domestic situation. 
You bid her make ready the wedding-garments 
and the marriage feast, and then sit quietly wait- 
ing till the bridegroom cometh, her small hands 
folded, her meek eyelashes drooping, no throb of 
impatience or discontent or anxiety in her heart, 
no reaching out for any career at home or abroad, 
except a meek ministration in her father's house, 
or a mild village benevolence. But will Nature set 
aside her laws at your behest ? Is it of any use 
for you to lay down your yardstick and say, " Thus 
far shalt thou go, and no farther " ? Do you not 
see the inevitable result is a course of falsehood ? 



12 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

Is this a strong statement, a libel upon the female 
sex? But you read novel after novel in which 
the larger number of women — all, perhaps, except 
the heroine — are represented as artful, sly, deceit- 
ful, managing ; and generally the main object of 
their artifice is to secure a husband for themselves 
or for their daughters : yet you do not at once cry 
out in indignant protest against such misrepresen- 
tation. On the contrary, you follow the plot with 
lively interest, think the author has a very clear 
insight into human nature, and especially excels in 
the delineation of female character! 

Hear what one of your own writers says: ''If 
all the world were paper, all the sea ink, all the 
plants and trees pens, and every man a writer, — 
yet were they not able, with all labor and cunning, 
to set down all the craft and deceits of women." 

If my statement is a libel, it is less a libel than 
statements and implications under which people 
have hitherto rested with a wonderful degree of 
equanimity. It would be marvellous if it were 
a libel. A girl receives such training that it is 
wellnigh impossible for her to be sincere. You 
cannot give her whole life for six or a dozen years 
one direction, and then set her face suddenly to- 
wards another quarter, banishing from her mind 
every remembrance of past lessons, and every 
thought of her portrayed future. But unless such 
an erasure is made, or seems to be made, she 
knows that she forfeits good opinion, and stands 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 13 

in great danger of losing the one prize which has 
been placed before her, and which she may hope, 
but must not be detected in hoping, to win. Con- 
sequently she learns to dissemble. It is her only 
resource. Duplicity passes into her blood, and she 
learns to conceal and deny what you have taught 
her it is improper to feel, but what you have also 
made it impossible for her not to feel. I only 
wonder that any uprightness is left among women. 
That there are women upon whose garments the 
smell of fire has not passed, — that there are wo- 
men whose robes of whiteness have but a faint 
tinge of flame, — is not because the fagots have 
not been piled around them and the torch appHed. 

This is one result of the famous, the infamous 
" good wife " doctrines. 

Another, less fatal but sufficiently evil and more 
vexatious, is the injury that is inflicted upon nat- 
ural and healthful association. Men and women 
are not allowed to look upon each other as ra- 
tional beings ; every woman is a wife in the grub, 
every man is a possible husband in the chrysalis 
state. If young people enjoy each other's conver- 
sation, and make opportunities to secure it, there 
are dozens of gossips, male and female, who pro- 
ceed to forecast "a match." Intelligent inter- 
change of opinion and sentiments between a man 
and a woman for the mere delight in it, with no 
design upon each other's name or fortune, is a 
thing of which a large majority of civilized Ameri- 



14 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

cans have no conception. Such a commodity 
never had a place in their inventory. A man and 
a woman find each other agreeable, they cultivate 
each other's society, and anon. East, West, South, 
and North goes the report that they are " en- 
gaged." It is easy to see what a check this gives 
to an intercourse that would be in the highest 
degree beneficial to both sexes ; beneficial, by giv- 
ing to each a more - accurate knowledge of the 
other, and by improving what in each is good, and 
diminishing what is bad. 

One of three things should be done : cease to 
urge a girl on to marriage by every terror threat- 
ened and every allurement displayed ; by making 
it the reward of all her exertion, the arena of all 
her accomplishment, the condition of all her devel- 
opment ; or take measures to provide her with a 
suitable husband, so that she shall not be left for 
an indefinite time in uncertainty and doubt, set- 
tling, perhaps, at length into frivolity, waste, and 
despair ; or cease to condemn her for taking mat- 
ters into her own hand, and furnishing herself an 
opportunity for the exercise of those powers whose 
cultivation you have strenuously urged, and for 
whose employment you have made no provision. 
" Get a husband ! " Why should she not get a 
husband? What should you think of a boy who 
had been fitted by long training for the duties and 
responsibilities of a clergyman, or a lawyer, or a 
statesman, and should then make no attempt to 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 15 

become a clergyman, a lawyer, or a statesman ? 
What would you think of a father who should 
tram his son for any especial office, and should then 
forbid his son, upon pain of universal derision, to 
do anything to secure an induction into office ? 

I am loath to linger here, but I descend into the 
valley of shadows to show that, even on your own 
ground, you are a wicked and slothful servant. 

Whom do I mean by " you " ? I mean ninety- 
nine out of a hundred of all the men who will read 
this, and, in a modified degree, all the women 
whom they have drilled to acquiescence in their 
decisions. 

This baleful teaching goes still further. It not 
only drives girls into deception : it drives them 
into uncongenial marriages. It forces them to 
degradation. It does not permit them to view 
marriage in its natural and proper light. By per- 
petually assuming it as their destiny, even before 
they have any knowledge either of marriage or 
destiny, you so force their inclinations that they 
come to prefer marrying an indifferent person to 
not marrying at all, — or even to running the risk 
of not marrying at all. Instead of letting their 
minds take a healthful turn, branching off in such 
directions as nature chooses, you dwarf them in 
every direction but one, and in that you stimulate. 
If society w^ere equally divided ; if for every girl 
there were a man exactly adapted to her, and the 
two might by your words be induced to meet and 



16 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

marry, your talk might be harmless, and possibly 
beneficial ; but as the world is, at least this part 
of it, there is no such arrangement, and no remote 
possibility of such an arrangement. The material 
does not exist, even suppose the sagacity to discern 
and dispose of it did. The number of women is 
much larger than the number of men. In New 
England, at least, it is a dangerous thing for a 
woman to set her heart on marrying for a living. 
When, therefore, you make marriage indispensable, 
you institute an indiscriminate scramble. Since in 
* theory every girl must marry, and there are few to 
choose from, she must take such as she can get, and 
be thankful. She would like this, that, or the 
other quality, but it will not do to dally. The 
chance of a better husband is very remote ; num- 
bers are worse off than she, inasmuch as they 
have none at all ; the contingency of going unsup- 
plied is not to be thought of, and accordingly she 
takes up with what comes to hand. The few 
who are endowed with unusual charms of mind or 
person may exercise a limited choice, but the com- 
mon run of girls must make a common run of it. 
If one who is so attractive as to have many ad- 
mirers remains long unmarried, she is abundantly 
admonished of her danger. She is duly informed 
that she will one day grow old, and will certainly not 
always have such opportunities as she now enjoys. 
Her attractiveness is her stock in trade, which she 
must invest while the market is brisk. Great will 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 17 

be her loss if she does not. If without special 
attractions, a girl's position is still more embarrass- 
ing. Dependent in her father's house, with no 
career open to her, no arena for her action, what 
is to become of her ? Anything is better than a 
dependence which, her own heart tells her, is not 
long grateful to her father. He may not be unkind 
or miserly toward her ; he may not — and he may, 
for such things are done — taunt her with her 
want of success in making a match ; he may even 
be generous and chivalric towards her ; but she is 
conscious that he is disappointed. He may not 
acknowledge it even to himself, but she knows 
that she is not fulfilling his wishes, not meeting 
his ideal. Her support is somewhat a burden, her 
enforced presence somewhat a shame. He rejoiced 
in her infancy, childhood, and youth, but he did 
not expect to have her on his hands all her life. 
He would gladly spend twice as much on her dowry 
as he gives for her allowance. She has a sens'e of 
all this, and, rather than remain in this state of 
pupilage, a woman in character, a child in position, 
she marries the first man that holds out the golden 
spectre, — I meant sceptre, but perhaps the first 
will do just as well. I am speaking of the masses. 
I know that there are exceptions. In spite of cir- 
cumstances, there are women so strong, — strong- 
minded if you like, but so symmetrical that you 
see no peculiar strength or sweetness, only " a per- 
fect woman," — so strong, that public opinion and 



18 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

private opinion, all the blare and blarney of lecture- 
room and female-school orators, all the thinly dis- 
guised paganism of church-worldlings, beat against 
them and leave them unmoved as Gibraltar by 
the summer ripples of its southern sea. You see 
them yourself, perhaps ; but so beautiful, so gentle 
and lovely, that you do not discern the granite 
which underlies beauty and grace, and which alone 
redeems beauty and grace from the charge of gaud, 
and makes their value ; and in your low Dutch 
dialect you '' wonder she does n't get married." 

There are fathers and mothers, though these are 
rarer, who joy in their children with a rational 
and Christian joy ; who believe in God and right- 
eousness, immortality and human destiny ; whose 
daughters are polished stones, not in the palaces 
of earthly pride, vanity, and ambition, but in the 
temple of the living God. Such parents and such 
children are few, but they are enough to reveal 
possibilities. The higher the few can reach, the 
higher the many shall rise. But these are the 
strong, and the strong can take care of themselves. 
I have nothing to say for them . I speak for those 
who are not strong, — for the good and true-heart- 
ed, who feel themselves overborne by external 
pressure, and swept along into a hateful and hated 
vortex, — for those who wish to lead an upright 
Christian life, but who need a helping hand. Still 
more, and saddest of all, I speak for those on 
whom the blight has so long rested that they have 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, la 

lost the sense of uprightness ; they feel no wrong, 
and aspire to nothing higher. More than this, 
I speak for those whose opening lives are yet 
untouched, for whom warning and caution may 
not be too late. It is these — the weak, the plastic, 
the impressible — whom your earth-born morality 
is corrupting, whose possibiHties of happiness and 
self-respect your enervating woman's-sphere-ism 
is destroying. Women may be weak, yet even in 
weakness is strength, but you have trodden down 
strength. You trample under foot all sensibility, 
all delicacy, all dignity. A woman can preserve 
her integrity only so far as she repels and re- 
presses your miserable didactics ; — by word and 
look, if the power be given her ; by a silent indig- 
nation of protest, if that is her only resource. 

I know well, judging from past experience, that 
there will not be wanting those who will think I 
am depreciating and deprecating marriage. But 
it would be extremely foolish to set one's self 
against marriage, for it would be holding out a 
straw to dam a river. I not only do not hold out 
the straw, I do not even wish to dam the river. 
But I would prevent it from being banked up here 
and banked up there, and narrowed, twisted, and 
tortured, till it bursts all bounds, natural and 
acquired, and rushes wildly over the country, 
destroying villages, inundating harvests, sweeping 
away lives, and becoming a terror and a fate in- 
stead of the beneficence it was meant to be. 



20 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

I depreciate marriage ? I magnify it ! It is 
you that depreciate, by debasing it. You lower 
it to the level of the market. You degrade it to 
a question of political and domestic economy. You 
look upon it as an arrangement. I believe it to be 
a sacrament. You subordinate it to ways and 
means. I see in it the type of mortal and im- 
mortal union. You make it but the cradle of 
mankind. I make it also the crown. All that is 
tender, grand, and ennobhng finds there its home, 
its source and sustenance, its inspiration, and its 
exceeding great reward. 

But by as much as marriage is sacred, by so 
much is he a blasphemer who travesties it ; and he 
thrice and four times blasphemous who leads others 
to do so. No sin is so dwelt on in the Bible with 
a stern, reiterated fixedness of divine abhorrence 
as the sin of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who 
made Israel to sin. They who barter their chil- 
dren for a string of beads, or a talent of gold, are 
no more pagan than they who, by accumulated 
indirections, lead them to barter themselves. I 
do not undertake the defence of all " woman's 
rights," but with whatever strength God has 
given me I will do battle for woman's right to be 
pure. ''' Caesar's wife should be above suspicion," 
said haughty Caesar, and the world applauds ; but 
every woman is czarina by divine right. No 
wretched outcast, wandering through the darkness 
of the great city, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 21 

" With hell in her heart 
And death in her hand, 
Daring the doom of the unknown land/' 

but has lost a crown. For her who, through 
weakness or despair, has forfeited her birthright, 
the world has no pardon. I do not say that ye 
should pray for it to be otherwise. But a deeper 
sin, a tenfold more gross and revolting violation 
of God's law written on the human heart, — giving 
force to the law written erewhile on, the tables 
of stone, — does she commit who, in the holy name 
of love, under the holy forms of marriage, burns 
incense to false gods. Where love may walk 
white-robed and stainless, brushing the morning 
dews from the grass, only to descend again in 
fresher and fragrant showers, pride or prudence 
or ambition can but bring the deepest profanation : 
roses spring in his pathway : behind them is the 
desert. 

Marriage contracted to subserve material ends, 
however innocent those ends may be in themselves, 
is legalized prostitution ; as much more vilifying, 
as mischief framed by a law is more destructive 
than mischief wrought in spite of ]aw\ To such 
vice the w^orld is lenient, scarcely recognizing it as 
vice ; but the soul bears its marks of wounds for- 
ever and forever. 

Marriage is a result, not a cause. In God's 
great economy it may have its separate and im- 
portant work ; but from a human point of view, it 



22 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 



is conclusion and not premise. It cannot be made 
the premise without bringing fatal and disastrous 
conclusions. Whatever ends nature may design 



her institution to 
work out. 



compass, be sure nature will 




Ill 




DO not design to sketch any Utopia for 
woman ; but there are certain things 
which can be done in this world, in 
this country, in this generation, at this 
moment, — simple, practical, practicable measures, 
which can be accomplished without any change 
in laws, without any palpable revolution or dis- 
ruption of society, but by which women shall be 
relieved of the indignity that is constantly put 
upon them, even by the society which considers 
itself, and which perhaps is, the most civilized and 
chivalric in the world. 

First, every man who has daughters is either 
able to support them or he is not. If he is, he 
ought to do it in a way that shall make them feel 
as little trammelled as possible. He should so treat 
them, from first to last, that they shall feel that 
they are dear and pleasant to him, his delight and 
ornament. So far frofn wishing to be rid of them, 
he finds his balm and solace and zest of life in their 
society, their interests, and their ministrations. 



24 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

While he contemplates the contingency of their 
marriage, and makes what preparations such con- 
tingency may require, it should be well under- 
stood that he contemplates it only as a contingency ; 
and that all his wishes and hopes will be best met 
by their happiness, whether it is to be promoted 
by a life away from him or with him. If they are 
so deficient in amiability, capability, or adaptability 
that his home cannot be comfortable with them in 
it, — that, so far from being a reason why he should 
be eager to part with them, is the strongest reason 
why he should earnestly endeavor to keep them 
with him. Almost without fail, their faults lie at 
his door ; and it is just and right that, if any 
home is to be made miserable by them, it should 
be the one which has made them miserific. On 
the other hand, if they wish to go from his roof 
to follow paths of their own, he ought to aid and 
encourage them as far as lies in his power. It 
matters not that he is able and willing to supply 
their every want. He is not able, if they have 
immortal wants, — wants which the parental heart 
and purse cannot satisfy, — want of activity, want 
of a plan, want of some work which shall engage 
their young and eager energies. However liberal, 
kind, and fond he may be, in their father's house 
their position must be subordinate,- and it may well 
happen that they shall wish to taste the sweets 
of an independent, self-helping, self-directing life. 
They wish to feel their own hands at the helm ; 



ui NEW ATMOSPHERE, 25 

they wish to know what responsibility and fore- 
sight and planning mean. They are drawn by 
a strong, inexplicable attraction in certain direc- 
tions ; and as he values not only their happiness, 
but their salvation, — their love for him, their 
health of body and mind, — he shall give them am- 
ple room and verge enough. He shall not abate 
one jot or tittle of fatherly affection. He shall 
not attempt to persuade them from their inclina- 
tion till he finds persuasion of no avail, and then 
in a fit of angry petulance bid them go, and leave 
them to their own destruction. He shall give 
them such aid as can be made available. He 
shall surround them with his love, if not with his 
care. He shall, above all, show them that his 
arms are always open to them, if through weak- 
ness or weariness they faint by the way. His 
sympathy and protection, and fatherly cherishing, 
shall be new every morning and fresh every even- 
ing. If they quickly tire in their new paths, they 
will come back to him with stronger love and 
faith. Their life abroad will have only endeared 
their happy home. The enlargement of their ex- 
perience will have intensified their appreciation of 
their blessings. If their call w^as indeed from 
above, and their first feeble explorations opened for 
them a new world, through which they learn to 
walk with ever firmer tread, they will return 
from time to time to lay at his feet with unut- 
terable gratitude the treasures which he enabled 

2 



26 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

them to discover. He will know that he has con- 
tributed to the world's wealth, and his happy 
children will rise up and call him blessed. 

But if they do not incline to such a life, he shall 
not force them, however strongly he may be per- 
suaded of its propriety, wisdom, and dignity. Be- 
cause they are obliged to grow under the whole 
superincumbent weight of society, he must not be 
severe if they attain but a partial growth. With 
boys the preponderance of influence is overw^helm- 
ingly on the side of an active, positive life. With 
girls, it is against it. If a boy does not do some- 
thing in the w^orld, he must show cause for it ; a 
girl must show cause if she does. Therefore, if 
the father is not able, by precept and persuasion, 
to induce his daughters to embrace an active life, 
he must lay it to society, and do the next best 
thing by protecting them as far as possible from 
the resultant evils of their situation ; not quite all 
to society either, for, as a general thing, if his own 
precept and example have been right, his children 
will be right ; the influence of father and mother, 
by its nearness, intensity, and continuity, very 
often more than balances the superior bulk of 
society's influence. Parents say things which 
they ought to mean, and which they wish to be 
considered to mean, and which they suppose they 
do mean, but which they are really the farthest in 
the world from meaning, and then marvel that 
their children should disregard their instructions 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 27 

and go wrong; but such instructions are but as 
the dust in the balance. The ideal which they 
actually, though perhaps unconsciously, hold up to 
their children, is the model upon which the chil- 
dren form themselves. What they are, not what 
they say, is the paramount influence. So if a father 
heartily believes in womanly work, his daughters 
will hardly fail to be woman-workers. 

If a father is not able to support his daughters 
in a manner compatible with comfort and refine- 
ment, he should see to it that they have some way 
opened in which they can do it, or help do it, for 
themselves, in a manner consistent with their dig- 
nity and self-respect. It is very rarely that a 
human being is born without possible power in 
some one direction. The field which is traversable 
to women is much more circumscribed than that 
which is traversed by men, yet I have somewhere 
read a statement that the number of employments 
in which women of the United States are actually 
engaged is, I think, greater than five hundred. 
If this is so, or anything nearly so, men surely 
have no need to ''marry off" their daughters as 
an economical measure. Out of five hundred 
occupations, a woman can certainly choose one 
which, though not perhaps that which enlists her 
enthusiasm, is yet better than the debasement of 
herself which an indifferent marriage necessitates. 
It is better to be not wholly well-placed than to 
be wholly ill-placed. Indeed, there are many 



28 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

chances in favor of the assumption that she may 
find even a suitable employment. Literature and 
art are open to her on equal terms with men> 
Teaching is free to her, with the disadvantage of 
being miserably, shamefully, wickedly underpaid, 
both as regards the relative and intrinsic value of 
her work ; but this is an arrangement which does 
not degrade her, only the men who employ her. 
Many mechanical employments she is at perfect 
liberty to acquire, and the greater delicacy of her 
organization gives her a solid advantage over her 
masculine competitors. In factories, in printing- 
offices, and in all manner of haberdashers' shops, 
she is quite at home ; and this branch of trade she 
ought to monopolize, for surely a man is as much 
out of his sphere in holding up a piece of muslin at 
arm's length, and expatiating on its merits to a 
bevy of women, as a woman is in the pulpit or 
before the mast. Especially do private houses 
invite her over all the country. The whole land 
groans under inefficient domestic assistance ; and 
if healthy, intelligent, well-behaved American girls 
would be willing to work in kitchens which they 
do not own one half as hard as most women w^ork 
in kitchens which they do own, thousands of doors 
would fly open to them. There is a foolish pride 
and prejudice which rises up against ^' going out to 
service." But everybody in this world, who is 
not a cumberer of the ground, is out at service. 
If it is true service and well performed, one thing 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 29 

is as honorable as another. The highest plaudit 
mortal can hope to receive is, " Well done, good 
and faithful servant." It is the absence of moral 
dignity and character, not, as is often supposed, its 
presence, which causes this reluctance. A noble- 
man ennobles his work, A king among basket- 
makers is none the less a king. How women 
can be so enamored of the needle as to choose to 
make a pair of cotton drilling drawers, with buckles, 
button-holes, straps, and strings, for four and one 
sixth cents, or fine white cotton shirts with fine 
linen "bosoms" for sixteen cents apiece, rather 
than go into a handsome house in the next street 
to make the beds, and- scour the knives, and iron the 
clothes' for a dollar and a half a week,* besides board 
and rent, I do not understand. That so many are 
ready to brave the din of machinery, and the smells 
of a factory for ten hours a day, with only a great, 
dreary, unhomelike boarding-house to go to at 
night, while there are so very few, if any, who are 
willing to preside over a comfortable and plentiful 
kitchen, with at least a possibility of home com- 
forts, pleasant association, and true appreciation, is 
equally inexplicable. 

But enough has been said to show, that, if women 
have a desire, or are under the necessity, of get- 
ting an honest living, ways and means may be 
found ; not so stimulating, not so lucrative, not so 

* This was written before the advent of high prices. At pres- 
ent such service would command perhaps twice that sum. 



30 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

varied as might be desired, but honest and honor- 
able. Girls, however, make the mistake of rush- 
ing pell-mell into school-houses, as if that were 
the only respectable path to independence. I 
heard a man the other day speaking about the 
High School of his native city. It was a good 
school, — he had nothing to say against its con- 
duct, — it gave girls a good education ; and yet he 
sometimes thought it did more harm than good. 
Every year a class was graduated, and they were 
all ladies and did not want to work, but must 
all teach, and there were no schools for so many ; 
what could be done with them ? It was an 
evil that seemed to be growing worse every year. 
The implied grievance was, that educated w^omen 
were a drug in the market; and the implied rem- 
edy, that girls should be left more uncultivated 
that they might be turned to commoner uses. I 
pass over that accurate knowledge of things shown 
in the unconscious contrast between working and 
teaching, — over the gross utilitarianism implied 
in both grievance and redress,— simply remarking, 
that, if the excess of supply over demand would jus- 
tify the breaking up of High Schools, the domestic 
education of this generation should be largely dis- 
continued for the same reason, and that in fact 
there seems to be no real and adequate resource, 
except to manage with girl babies as you do with 
kittens, save the fifth and drown the rest, — to say 
that girls do very wrong in regarding teaching as 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 31 

the sole or the chief honorable employment. That 
occupation is the one for them to which a natural 
taste calls them, no matter what may be its rank 
in society. In fact, let it not be forgotten that 
society looks with a degree of disfavor on any 
remunerative employment for w^omen. To be 
entirely beyond the reach of cavil, they must be 
consumers, and not producers ; and since, to turn 
into producers will forfeit somewhat their caste, 
let them make capital out of the rural and remote 
adage, that one may as well be hung for a sheep 
as a lamb, and while they are about it, follow the 
thing that good is to them. If girls of wealth 
and standing, who also possess character and de- 
cision, would act upon their principles when they 
have them, and follow the lead of their tastes when 
their taste leads them into a milliner's shop, or a 
w^atch factory, or a tailor's room, they would do 
much more than satisfy their own consciences. 
They would do a service to their sex, and through 
their sex to the other, and so to the w^hole world, 
which would outweigh whatever small sacrifice it 
might cost them. For the world is so constituted 
that to him that hath shall be given. If he have 
power, he shall have still more. Those who are 
independent of the world's sufferance are toler- 
ably sure to get it. Let a poor girl go to work, 
and it is nothing at all. She is obliged to do it, 
and society does not so much as turn a look upon 
her ; but let a girl go out from her brown-stone 



32 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

five-story house, from the care and attendance of 
servants, to work for three or five hours a day, 
because she honestly behoves that the accident of 
wealth does not relieve her from moral responsi- 
bility, and because, of all forms of labor practicable 
to her, that seems the one to which she is best 
adapted, and immediately there is a commotion. 
The brown-stone friends are shocked and scandal- 
ized, which is probably the best thing that could 
happen to them. Desperate cases can only be 
electrified back into life. But it is the first girl 
alone that will cause a shock. The second will 
make but a faint sensation. The third will be 
quite commonplace, and when things come to that 
pass, that if a woman wishes to do a thing she can 
do it, and that is the end of it, there is little more 
to be desired in that line. 

I know a young lady, the only daughter of a 
distinguished family, with abundant means at her 
command, with parents whose great happiness it is 
to promote hers, — a young lady who has only to 
fancy what a nice thing it must be to live in a 
bird's-nest on a tree-top, and immediately the car- 
penters come and build her a bower in the tallest 
tree that overlooks the sea. This young lady has 
a strong inclination to surgery, a most perverted 
and unwomanly taste, of course ; but so long as it 
is a womanly weakness to break one's arms, per- 
haps it is as well that some woman should be un- 
womanly enough to set them. At any rate, there 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 33 

was the taste ; nobody put it there, and something 
must be done about it. Being the sensible daugh- 
ter of sensible parents, who looked upon tastes 
as hints of powers, instead of disregarding this 
hint and devoting her life to her garden, making 
calls, and a forced and feeble piano-worship, — all 
very nice things, but not quite exhaustive of im- 
mortal capacities, — she set herself down to the 
study of surgery and medicine. It was no super- 
ficial and sensational whim. Year after year, 
month after month, week after week, showed no 
abatement of enthusiasm. On the contrary, her 
interest grew with her growing knowledge. She 
left without regret, without any weak regrets, her 
luxurious home for the secluded and severe stu- 
dent's life, and by patient and laborious application 
made herself master of the science. I look upon 
her almost as an apostle, though she is very far 
from taking on apostolic airs. She quietly pursues 
the even tenor of her way as if it were the beaten 
track. But in doing this she does ^ten thousand 
times more. She opens the path for a host of feet 
less strong than hers. 

But one great obstacle in the way of woman's 
attaining strength is her lack of perseverance. Of 
the many pursuits possible to w^omen, few are em- 
braced to any great extent, because girls are said 
to be, and probably are, unwilling to bestow upon a 
trade or a profession the study and thought which 
are necessary to insure skill. But this is a result 

2# C 



34 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

as well as a cause, and must be removed by the 
removal of the cause. Promotion and political 
preferment shine before a man as a reward for 
whatever eminence of character or intelligence he 
may attain. His business is a separate depart- 
ment, and dispenses its separate reward. The first 
of these is entirely, and the second partially, want- 
ing to women. A female assistant in a high 
school, a woman of education, refinement, accom- 
plishments, tact, and sense, receives six hundred 
dollars, and if she stays six hundred years she will 
receive no more. A male assistant, fresh from 
a college or a normal school, thoroughly unsea- 
soned, without elegance of manners, or dignity of 
presence, or experience, teaching only tempora- 
rily, with a view to the pulpit, or the bar, or a 
professorship, receives a thousand dollars. His 
thousand is because he is a man. Her six hun- 
dred is because she is a woman. Her little finger 
may be worth more to the school than his whole 
body, but that goes for nothing. In a certain 
" college " I wot of, the " Professors " have a larger 
salary than the "Preceptresses," who perform dou- 
ble the amount of labor, and without any hope of 
promotion. Female assistants in a grammar school 
receive three or four hundred dollars where the 
male principal has ten or twelve hundred, and 
where the difference of salary bears no propor- 
tion to the difference of care and labor. No 
matter how assiduously they may devote them- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 35 

selves to their duties, nor how successful they may 
be in results, they have attained the maximum. 
Worse than this : since the increase of prices con- 
sequent upon the war, teachers' salaries have been 
increased; but where two hundred dollars have 
been added to the salary of the male principal, 
only twenty-five have been added to those of the 
female assistants : so that the man's salary is six- 
teen per cent higher, while the woman's is only six 
per cent higher. This is done in Massachusetts. 
One excuse is, that it does not cost a woman so 
much to live as it costs a man. It costs a woman 
just as much to live as it does a man. If men would 
be willing to practise the small economies that wo- 
men practise, they could live at no greater expense. 
There are some things in which women have the 
advantage ; there are others in which it lies with 
the man. A woman's calico gown does not cost 
so much, as a man's broadcloth coat, but her dress, 
the wardrobe through, costs just as much as his. 
He can be decent on just as small a sum as she. 
Another excuse is, that men have a family to sup- 
port. I suppose, then, that women never have 
families to support. No female teacher ever has 
a widowed mother or an invalid father to assist, or 
brothers and sisters to educate. No widow ever 
had recourse to the school-room to provide bread 
for her fatherless children. Or if such things ever 
happen, the authorities make adequate provision 
for it. The school committee, of course, before it 



36 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

assigns the salary inquires into these background 
facts, and acts accordingly. The rich girl has in- 
deed but a small income from her teaching, but 
the poor girl is paid according to the number of 
people dependent upon her, and the unmarried 
man is confined to narrower fortunes. 

You know that such a thing is never done. The 
men always receive the high salaries and the wo- 
men always receive the low salaries ; no one ever 
asks who does the work or who supports the fami- 
lies. It is only a feeble excuse to hide men's self- 
ish greed. They are the lions, and they take the 
lion's share. They can give themselves plenty and 
women a pittance, and they do it, and they mean 
to do it, and they wdll do it. It matters not that 
the ten or twelve or fourteen hundred dollars di- 
vided among the man's family of himself, his wife, 
and his one or tw^o or no children, gives to each, 
even to the little baby playing on the floor, as 
much money for support as the female teacher re- 
ceives who devotes her whole time and strength 
to the school. It matters not that his children are 
growing up to be the staff of his declining years, 
while the unmarried female assistant has only her 
own self for reliance. Man is a thief and holds 
the bag, and if women do not like to teach for what 
they can get, so much the better. They will be all 
the more wilUng to become household drudges. 

Again, read the following paragraph from a prom- 
inent newspaper printed in Massachusetts. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 87 

" The custom of employing ladies as clerks in 
the public departments at Washington is meeting 
with increased favor. It is said that, generally- 
speaking, they write more correctly than the men, 
and as they receive much smaller salaries, the gain 
to the government is considerable." 

Could six lines better express the wickedness of 
the relations which exist between man and w^oman 
under the " best government in the world " ? The 
shabby chivalry of " ladies " ; the matter-of-fact 
manner in which not only a wrong, but an absurd- 
ity, is mentioned, as if it were as evident as a syl- 
logism, and had no more to do with morality than 
the multiplication-table ; and then the neat little 
patriotico-economical chuckle at the end ! Women 
do the work better than men, and receive much 
smaller salaries. A logical sequence, and an ex- 
cellent example of the reasoning which is brought 
to bear on women. Especially dignified and com- 
manding is the attitude assumed for our govern- 
ment. The Great 'Republic, stretching its arms 
across a continent, vexing every land for its treas- 
ures, and whitening every sea with its sails, yet 
stoops over a poor woman's pocket to take toll of 
the few pennies which her labor has fairly earned. 
" The wise save it call." 

But there is a lower deep than this. The very 
same paper that so naively blazoned forth its own 
shame, made another brilliant essay at about the 
same time. I quote the paragraph from memory, 
but it is substantially correct. 



38 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

" Miss Anna Dickinson demanded three [or six, 
or whatever it was] hundred dollars for two lec- 
tures delivered for the benefit of the Sanitary Fair 
in Chicago. Miss Charlotte Cushman gave eight 
thousand dollars, the entire proceeds of her theatri- 
cal tour, to the Sanitary Commission. Comment 
is unnecessary." 

For all that, we will have a little comment. Here 
is one woman in a million rising by the sheer force 
of her God-given genius above the miserable ne- 
cessities of women. She needs not to endure or to 
beg. She is sovereign in her own right and can 
dictate her own terms. Men cannot grind her face, 
for she is stronger than they. What do they do ? 
They hold her up to odium because they cannot 
extort from her the money which they cannot pre- 
vent her from earning. Most women they can pre- 
vent from earning it. Most working-women they 
can keep down to what prices they choose to pay. 
But here is one to whom they cannot dole out 
pennies: "with one white arm-sweep " she gathers 
in a golden harvest. But they will at least force 
her Pactolian stream into a channel of their own 
choosing. Not at all. 

'^ If she will, slie will, you may depend on 't ; 
If she won't, she won't, and there 's an end on 't." 

Nothing, therefore, is left to these high-minded 
gentry, but to stand at a distance and " make 
faces " ! 

Somebody assumed to excuse Miss Dickinson, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 39 

by saying that she gave up other and far more lu- 
crative engagements for this ; but it was entirely a 
work of supererogation. Miss Dickinson needed 
no excuse. One might, indeed, think within him- 
self that Miss Cushman has nearly closed her pub- 
lic career, and is already possessed of an indepen- 
dent fortune, while Miss Dickinson's life lies before 
her, and her fortune is still to be made. But all 
this is irrelevant. The whole paragraph is an im- 
pertinence. Why is any person to be mulcted 
at another's instance in any sum for any charity 
or any purpose whatever ? What right has any 
newspaper to decide the direction or the amount 
of a citizen's benevolence ? Had it concerned a 
man, it would have been impertinence ; concern- 
ing a woman, it is something worse, — not because 
of her womanhood, but because of the injustice 
which is wrought upon her sex wherever there 
is the ability to be unjust. 

These are very small things, but they are signs 
of great ones. 

It may be inferred, therefore, that woman's in- 
difference to excellence in work does not necessa- 
rily impugn either her character or calibre. Ex- 
cellence is indeed good in itself, and desirable, 
without reference to the money it brings ; yet 
money and promotion are a spur, and therefore 
they must be taken into the account when we are 
dealing with facts and not merely with theories. 

Now, then, let women, disregarding senseless 



40 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

and wicked customs, make * a point of making a 
point of something,' and then let them lay aside 
every weight which social injustice or indifference 
hangs upon them, and the consequent sin of super- 
ficiality which so easily besets them, and make that 
point perfect. No matter that they are ill-paid 
and held down, let them assert themselves ; let 
them work so well that their work shall assert itself, 
and pay and promotion will come — to woman, if 
not to themselves — as the inevitable result. 

I do not mean that every woman should study 
medicine, or apprentice herself to a trade. In- 
deed, I consider it to be a wrong state of society 
in which there is any other necessity for her doing 
so than that which arises from her own inward 
promptings. It is very likely that she can find 
in her father's house abundant scope for the exer- 
cise of every faculty. She may have a leaning to 
home life, and to no other. Because a girl remains 
at home, it by no means follows that she is accom- 
plishing nothing. What I do mean is, that she 
shall not dawdle away her time simply because she 
is a girl ; and that if, moved by her own instincts, 
which are from God, or impelled by circumstances, 
which are generally the fault of men, she enters 
the arena where men strive, she shall have no 
other disabilities than those which Nature lays 
upon her. Do not fail to note the distinction be- 
tween choice and necessity in her adoption of a 
career. When a woman, of her own free will and 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 41 

delight, pursues a study or an occupation beyond 
the common female range, it is one thmg. When 
she is obliged to earn her own living, and for that 
purpose goes out into the paths where men walk, 
it is another thing. In both cases she should work 
on equal terms with men ; in the first, because the 
very strength of her purpose, overcoming the natu- 
ral disinclinations of her sex, shows it to be of 
celestial origin, and therefore worthy of respect ; in 
the second, because, if man fails to give to woman 
the support which is her due, the smallest step to- 
wards reparation is to allow her every advantage 
in the attempt to support herself. It is always a 
sorrowful, I think it is always an injurious thing, 
for a woman to be obliged to compete with men, 
that is, to earn money. She can do it only at the 
constant torture, or the constant sacrifice — per- 
haps both — of something higher than can be 
brought into the strife. But so much the more 
should she be freed from every unnecessary pain 
and hinderance. Moreover, evil as is the imperative 
assumption by woman of man's work, it combats a 
greater evil, and therefore also should her hands 
be upheld. The most persistent and kindly en- 
couragement can never change, in the womanly 
heart, love of home into love of conquest and re- 
nown ; but it can do much to soften the harshness 
of an uncongenial lot, and take somewhat from the 
bitterness of a cup that never can be sweet. 

The mere fact of a daughter's services being 



42 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

needed at home is no reason why they shall be 
claimed after she has become of age, either through 
years, or maturity of character, when such service 
is distasteful to her, and other service is tasteful 
and possible. If, for instance, a girl has a strong 
desire to be a milliner, or a mantua-maker, or an 
artist, she should not be prevented because her 
mother wants her at home to help take care of 
the children and do the work. I suppose to many 
this will seem unnatural and undutiful. It is nei- 
ther the one nor the other. There are remarka- 
ble notions afloat concerning nature and duty. If 
one may judge from popular ethics, the duty seems 
to lie chiefly on one side. Lions, we are told, 
would appear to the world in a very different light 
if lions wrote history ; so filial and parental rela- 
tions, discussed as they always are by the parental 
part of the community, have a different bearing 
from what they would if looked at from the chil- 
dren's point of view. In our eagerness to enforce 
the claims which parents have on children, we 
seem sometimes ready to forget the equally strin- 
gent claims which children have on parents. Much 
is said about the gratitude which parental care im- 
poses upon the child ; very little about the respon- 
sibility which his involuntary birth imposed upon 
himself. 

Here is a daughter, an immortal being, account- 
able to God. Surely, when she has become a 
woman, she has a right to direct her life in the 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 43 

manner best adapted to bring out its abilities. No 
human being has a right to appropriate another 
human being's Hfe, — even if they be mother and 
daughter. You say that she owes life itself to her 
parents. True, but in such a way that it confers 
an additional obligation on them to give her every 
opportunity to make the most of life, and not in 
such a way as to justify them in monopolizing it, 
nor in such a way as to render her accountable to 
them alone for its use. The person who gives life 
is under much stronger bonds than the person who 
receives life. Life is a momentous thing. It may 
be an eternal curse. It is almost certain to in- 
volve deep sorrow. Sin, disease, pain, are almost 
sure to follow in its wake.. It is a Pandora's box 
whose best treasure is only a compensation. The 
happiest thing we know of it is, that it will one 
day come to an end : Psyche will rend off her dis- 
guises, and soar in her proper form. The uncer- 
tainty of the future is our solace against the cer- 
tainty of the present. Surely, then, of all people in 
the world, those who impose this fearful burden 
are the very last who should add even a feather's 
weight to it, and the very first and foremost who 
should at any sacrifice of less important matters 
lighten it as far as possible. Filial unfaithfulness 
is a sin^ but parental unfaithfulness is a chief of 
sins. The first violates relations which it finds. 
The second violates those which it makes. Almost 
invariably the second is the direct cause of the first. 



44 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

There may be extraordinary malformations : a child 
may be born with some organic incapacity for love, 
or gratitude, or virtue, as children are born blind 
or deaf. But, as a rule, parental love and wisdom 
result in filial love and duty growing stronger and 
stronger every day, and removing the possibility 
of sacrifice by making all service a pleasure. Be- 
cause, where I knew the circumstances, I never saw 
an instance of filial misbehavior that could not be 
traced directly to parental mismanagement or neg- 
lect, I believe it is so where I do not know the 
circumstances. I am persuaded that Solomon had 
the spirit of truth when he declared, " Train up 
a child in the way he should go, and when he is 
old he will not depart from it." A son administers 
arsenic to his parents, and the world starts back in 
horror. I would not diminish its horror ; but be- 
fore you lavish all your execration on the son, find 
out whether the parents have not been administer- 
ing poison, or suffered poison to be administered, to 
his mind and heart from his earhest infancy. Be 
shocked at that. I never saw or heard of a son 
born of virtuous parents, and wisely trained in the 
ways of virtue, who turned about and poisoned his 
parents after he had grown up. The eider-duck 
plucks the down from her own breast to warm the 
nest for her young, and I do not suppose an un- 
grateful or rebellious eider-duckling wag ever heard 
of; but if the eider-duck plucks the down from the 
breasts of her young to line the nest for herself — 
what then ? 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 45 

If a daughter, out of love or a " sense of duty," 
chooses to sacrifice her inclinations, — by inclina- 
tions I do not mean the mere promptings of self- 
indulgence, but the voice of her soul calling her 
to a work in life, — I say not that she does not 
well. I only say that her mother has no right to 
demand such a sacrifice. It is an unjust exaction. 
It is a selfish building up of comfort on the ruins 
of another's happiness, possibly of character, since 
few things are so apt to warp the tone of mind and 
temper as a forced performance of unsuitable work. 
Before children are old enough to choose for them- 
selves, their parents must choose for them, — even 
then with a wary care lest they mistake a prompt- 
ing of nature for a whim, but every restraint that 
is put upon a child for any other purpose than his 
own benefit is a sin against a soul. What duty 
his love does not prompt, you shall not by the sheer 
brute force of your position require. His life is in 
his own hands, put there by you, and he must 
make it into a vessel of honor or dishonor. You 
shall not hold back his hand from working its own 
beautiful designs, that it may putty up the cracks 
in your time-worn vessel. You make great ac- 
count of the care which you took of his helpless 
infancy; but he owes no especial gratitude for 
that. As may be inferred from what I have be- 
fore said, it was a debt you owed him. Having 
endowed him with life, the least you could do was 
to help him make the best of it. It would have 



46 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

been cruel not to do it. You have only made 
things even in doing it, — and hardly that. Be- 
sides, such considerations are logically useless. You 
may fill a child's book, paper, and ears with his 
mother's anxiety and care for him. You may tell 
him how she has w^atched over him and toiled for 
him during his helpless infancy, and conjure him 
on that account to love and obey her. It will be 
a waste of breath. You might just as well conju- 
gate a Latin verb to him. He will no more form 
an intelligent conception of a mother's love and 
care from your most forcible description, than he 
would from amo, amas^ amat He is not capable 
of such a conception. A child's love is an in- 
stinct. It gradually develops into a sentiment 
which permeates his whole being. The mother's 
love is also an instinct. She nurses her child just 
as instinctively as a hen gathers her chickens un- 
der her wings. There generally is something more 
than instinct, but there is instinct. But at no 
stage of a child's life is love a matter of reasoning. 
If it is within him, it cannot be argued out ; if it 
is not, it cannot be argued in. Never a person 
loved because he was convinced he ought to love. 
He loves because he loves, and that is all that can 
be said about it. 

I hope I shall not be considered as attempting 
to weaken the cords between parents and children. 
On the contrary, I wish to strengthen them. But 
I wish to strengthen them by making them of that 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 47 

unseen, spiritual substance which alone is worthy 
of the relation, — proof against every external force, 
and drawing more and more closely with every 
opening year, — not of that gross and palpable out- 
ward material which chafes and irritates, and which 
will snap asunder the moment that young vigor 
spreads its wings. 




17. 




NOTHER truth, which seems to have 
been forgotten, and which needs to be 
newly revealed to this generation, is, 
that though manhood and womanhood 
are two distinct things, the humanity which under- 
lies them is one and indivisible. We are told that 
God made man male and female, but we are first 
told that God made man in his own image. There 
is no distinction. Woman is made in God's image 
just as much as man ; and it is just as wicked to 
deface that image in her as in him. It is defaced 
when her powers are crippled, and her organs en- 
feebled, whether it be by turning ber toes under 
till they touch the heels, and then bandaging them 
so, or whether that process be enacted on her 
mind. If a boy should stand god-like erect, in na- 
tive honor clad, so should a girl. She may not be 
as tall, but she may be as straight. The palm can- 
not turn into an oak, and has not the smallest de- 
sire to turn into an oak ; but there is no reason 
why it should not be the best kind of a palm, — and 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 49 

in the deserts of this world a fruitful palm cheereth 
the heart of both God and man. 

Read, in the light of these facts, a " sonnet" and 
its accompanying comments, which I chanced to 
find while looking over a twelve -year-old number 
of a magazine which stands among the first in 
America. 

" The learned ' science-women ' of the day, the 
' deep, deep-blue stockings ' of the time, are fairly 
hit off in the ensuing satirical sonnet : — 

' I idolize the Ladies ! They are fairies, 
That spiritualize this world of ours ; 
From heavenly hot-beds most delightful flowers, 
Or choice cream-cheeses from celestial dairies. 
But learning, in its barbarous seminaries, 
Gives the dear creatures many wretched hours, 
And on their gossamer intellect sternly showers 
Science, with all its horrid accessaries. 
Now, seriously, the only things, I think. 
In which young ladies should instructed be. 
Are — stocking-mending, love, and cookery ! — 
Accomplishments that very soon will sink. 
Since Fluxions now, and Sanscrit conversation. 
Always form part of female education ! ' 

" Something good in the way of inculcation may 
be educed from this rather biting sonnet. If 
woman so far forgets her ' mission,' as it is com- 
mon to term it now-a-days, as to choose those 
accomplishments whose only recommendation is 
that they are 'the vogue,' in preference to ac- 
quisitions which will fit her to be a better wife 



50 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

and mother, she becomes a fair subject for the 
shafts of the satirical censor." 

Leaving " gossamer intellects " to educe what- 
ever of good in the way of inculcation may be 
found in this biting sonnet, and in the equally 
mordacious remarks of the mulierivorous com- 
mentator, let me refer to another paragraph in 
which popular opinion is crystallized. It is found 
in a book printed and published in London, and 
coming to me through several hands from the 
library of an English nobleman, but a book so 
atrocious in its sentiments, and so feeble in its 
expression, that I will not give the small impulse 
to its circulation which the mention of its name 
might impart : '' In woman, weakness itself is the 
true charter of power ; it is an absolute attrac- 
tion, and by no means a defect ; it is the mys- 
terious tie between the sexes, a tie as irresistible 
as it is captivating, and begetting an influence pe- 
culiar to itself." This is the fancy sketch. Oiie 
of our best writers has drawn the true portrait of 
such a woman : a woman " to be the idol of her 
school-boy son, to be remembered in his gray old 
age with a reverential tenderness as a glorified 
saint, but a woman also to drive that same son to 
desperation in actual life by her absorption in 
trifles, by her weak credulity, .... by her in- 
ability to sympathize with his ambition, to enter 
into his difficulties, or to share in the faintest de- 
gree his aspirations." 



.1 NEW ATMOSPHERE, 51 

*^ In short," proceeds the advocate of the oak- 
and-vine humanity, ^' all independence is unfemi- 
nine; the more dependent that sex becomes, the 
more will it be cherished." 

Independence is unfeminine: what a pity that 
starvation and insanity are not unfeminine also ! 
Independence is unfeminine, but what provision 
is made for dependence ? Look about the world. 
How many men are there, dependence on whom 
would be agreeable to a sensitive woman ? and 
what shall the women do who have nobody to be 
dependent on, — the women without husbands or 
fathers, and the women with drunken, thriftless, 
extravagant, miserly, feeble or incapable husbands 
or fathers? When every woman in the coun- 
try is placed above the possibility of want, it will 
be time enough to talk about the sweets of de- 
pendence ; but so long as women are liable, and 
are actually reduced to want, to shame, to igno- 
miny, to starvation, and degradation and death, 
through the meanness, the misconduct, or the in- 
ability of their natural protectors, it will be well 
at least to connive at their efforts to help them- 
selves. An independent woman may be a nui- 
sance, but I think rather less so than an immoral 
woman, or an insane woman, or a dead woman in 
the bottom of a canal in Lowell, or a live woman 
making shirts for Milk Street merchants in Bos- 
ton, at five cents apiece. O men, you who shut 
your eyes to the stern and awful facts of life, and 



52 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

rhapsodize over your fine-spun theories, what will 
you say when the Lord maketh inquisition for 
blood ? In that great and terrible day that shall 
open the books of judgment, that shall wrest from 
the earth and the sea the secrets which are in 
them, w^hen the dead womeh come forth from 
their suicidal graves, when they swarm up from 
under the river-bridges, when they pour out from 
the gateways of hell, will it seem to you then a 
wise and righteous thing that you branded inde- 
pendence as unfeminine ? 

Apart from the bearings of this doctrine, one 
word as to its facts. There are two kinds of de- 
pendence, — the one of love, the other of neces- 
sity. Each may comprise the other, and all is 
well. But each may exist without the other, and 
then half is ill. The first is a delight. The sec- 
ond is a dread. The first is a delight, — but no 
more to woman than to man, for though the mat- 
ters in which they are dependent differ, the de- 
pendence itself is mutual, and mutually dear and 
precious. Nobody need enforce it by argument. 
It commends itself by its own inherent sweetness. 
But the second is an evil, and only an evil under 
the sun, — a state which no man and no woman 
of any spirit will for a moment willingly endure^ 
Dependence is a joy only where it is a boon ; other 
wise it is a burning torture if there is any soul to 
feel. 

But masculine deprecation of feminine inde- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 53 

pendence Is not entirely owing to a tender regard 
for the preservation unimpaired of feminine loveli- 
ness. Men think if vs^omen strike out in a career 
of their own, the matter of securing and disposing 
of a wife may not be quite the easy thing it is at 
present. 

They now have things their own way. The 
world is all before them where to choose. They 
have only to walk leisurely on, and it is O whistle 
and I '11 come to you, my lad. You think I put it 
too strongly : that is because you are looking into 
the bucket. I am speaking of the atmosphere. 
You have only to listen to the usual talk of usual 
people in villages and cities, and to the floating 
literature. You are not to take the intellectual 
in the one, nor the immortal in the other, for their 
rills spring from deeper sources, and represent the 
individual. It is the flitting, the ephemeral, the 
stories that Maggie Marigold and Kittie Katnip 
print in the county papers ; it is the talk that 
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones have about Nancy 
Briggs ; it is the women in the novels who are 
not the heroines, — these give the best photograph 
of actual popular opinion, and these give you six 
women intriguing for one man. It is not surpris- 
ing, that at first sight men should think it a fine 
thing to have a whole bazaar of beauty to choose 
from, with the market so glutted that the goods 
will be sold at prices to suit the purchasers. It 
is not necessary to be very good or very great, to 



54 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

win the prize. There is no prize to be won. It 
is only pick and choose. But have men no mis- 
givings ? Is necessity the surest warrant of adap- 
tation ? Are men conscious that their assumption 
is, that they are so unattractive, and the marriage 
yoke so heavy, that women will not endure either 
unless they are left without any other resource ? 
Is it pleasant to reflect that they cannot trust them- 
selves to woo, but that girls must be reduced to the 
alternative of marriage or nothing ? What pleas- 
ure can there be in a victory so easily gained? 
I know a man who says the reason why he mar- 
ried his wife was, because she was the only girl in 
the town whom he was not sure of beforehand. 
With nothing to do, women are as beggars by the 
wayside, holding up their feeble hands to the 
passer, and entreating, "We will eat our own 
bread and wear our own apparel : only let us be 
called by thy name to take away our reproach." 
Is this pleasant to think of? Does it flatter a 
man's self-love ? Would it not be more agreeable 
for a husband to suppose that he is his wife's 
choice and not — Hobson's? 

Let boarding-school anniversary orators and 
Mother's Magazine editors trust more in nature, 
and make themselves easy. Providence is never 
at a loss. There is not the slightest danger that 
marriage will fall into disuse through the absorp- 
tion of female interests in other directions. If every 
girl in the world were independent, full mistress of 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 55 

herself, she would not be any more disinclined to 
marriage than she is now. She w^ould not hang 
upon its skirts, dragging them into the mud, with 
such a helpless, desperate death-clutch as now. 
She would not be at the mercy of every schemer, 
every speculator, every unprincipled, unscrupulous 
manikin, who knows no better use for angels than 
to wash the dishes. She would not be such an 
article of trafSc, such a beast of burden, such a 
tame, spiritless, long-suftering, sly little sycophant, 
as she too often is now. There is not one woman 
in a million who would not be married, if — I bor- 
row a phrase from the popular, pestilent patois, 
but I transfigure it with its highest meaning — if 
she could get a chance. How do I know ? Just 
as I know that the stars are now shining in the 
sky, though it is high noon. I never saw a star at 
midday, but I know it is the nature of stars to 
shine in the sky, and of the sky to hold its stars. 
Genius or fool, rich or poor, beauty or the beast, 
if marriage were what it should be, w^hat God 
meant it to be, what even with the world's present 
possibilities it might be, it would be the Elysium, 
the sole complete Elysium, of woman, yes, and of 
man. Greatness, glory, usefulness, happiness, await 
her otherwhere ; but here alone all her powers, all 
her being, can find full play. No condition, no 
character even, can quite hide the gleam of the 
sacred fire ; but on the household hearth it joins 
the warmth of earth to the hues of heaven. Bril- 



56 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

liant, dazzling, vivid, a beacon and a blessing, her 
light may be, but only a happy home blends the 
prismatic rays into a soft serene whiteness, that 
floods the world with divine illumination. With- 
out wifely and motherly love, a part of her nature 
must remain unclosed, — a spring shut up, a foun- 
tain sealed ; but a thousand times better that it 
should remain unclosed than that it should be 
rudely rent open, or opened only to be defiled. 
A thousand times better that the vestal fire should 
burn forever on the inner shrine than that it 
should be brought out to boil the pot. But the 
pot must boil, you say, and so it must ; but with 
oak-wood and shavings, not with beaten olive-oil. 
This it is that I denounce, — not the use, but the 
abuse, of sacred things. I want girls to be saved 
from sacrilege. I do not want them to lay open 
their lives to spoliation. ^ I want every woman to 
fill her heart with hopes and plans and purposes ; 
and if a man will marry her, let him be so strong as 
to break down all barriers, check the whole flood- 
tide of her life, and sweep it around himself. If 
a woman is worth having, she is worth winning. J 
Jacob served seven years for Rachel and seven 
more, and they seemed unto him but a few days 
for the love he had to her. Shiver and scatter the 
wan, weak attachments that dare to call them- 
selves love. Scorn for this frothy, green whey 
that stands for the wine of life ! Better that girls 
should be pirated away as the rough-handed Ro- 



V 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 57 

mans won their Sabine wives, than that a man 
should have but to touch the tree with his cane as 
he walks through the orchard, and down comes the 
ready-ripe fruit. In Von Fink's fiery wooing of 
Lenore, I hear the right trumpet-ring : " With rifle 
and bullet I have bought your stormy heart." I 
would have a woman marry, not because it is the 
only thing that offers, but because a magnificence 
sweeps by, in whose glorious sun her pale stars 
faint and fade. Her soul shall be filled and fired 
with the heavenly radiance. All her dross shall 
be consumed, and all her gold refined. She shall 
go to her marriage-feast as Zenobia w^ent to Rome, 
crowned with flowers, but bound with golden 
chains, a conquered captive, and the banner over 
her shall be love. I would have her go obedient, 
not to the requirements of a false and fatal mate- 
rialism, naming itself with the names of morality 
and womanhood, but to the unerring instincts of 
her own nature. She shall not fly to the only 
refiige from the vacuum and despair of her life ; 
but her great heart and her strong hands shall 
be wrenched from their bent by the mysterious 
force of an irresistible magnetism. When you 
have a character that can so command, a love that 
can so control, you have set up on earth the pillars 
of Heaven, and redemption draweth nigh. 



3* 




UT if the pursuit of a separate and in- 
dependent career should not disindine 
girls to marriage, you think it would 
unfit them for its duties ; that an edu- 
cation, an occupation, and an interest in any other 
than a domestic direction would produce an indif- 
ferent housewife. Is this necessary ? Is it even 
probable ? Is there any sufficient reason why a 
woman who has trained her judgment in a medi- 
cal school, shall not go into life, not only with no 
disadvantage, but with positive advantage from 
such training? If her mind have acquired power 
of observation, and her fingers skill in execution, 
will she not be so much the better prepared for 
the duties of her situation, whatever they may be ? 
The ordering of a family is not like a trade, — a 
thing to be learned. It is multifarious and dis- 
tracting. The mistress of a household is like the 
sovereign of a free empire. She does not need, 
and cannot serve, an apprenticeship. The only 
way to prepare her for its duties is to enlarge her 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 59 

capacity to discharge them. She needs a thorough 
education. Everything fhat helps to build up mind 
and body, — everything that makes her healthful, 
hopeful, cheerful, spirited, self-reliant, energetic, 
strong, helps her to administer her affairs success- 
fully. A woman who can do one thing can do 
another thing, and she can do it all the better for 
having done the other one first ; so that the pur- 
suit of a profession, instead of incapacitating her 
for a domestic life, makes her better fitted for it. 
If for a year, or two or three, she has been study- 
ing the human system, or the stars, or the flowers, 
or the mysteries of cloak, or bonnet, or counter, or 
mint, she can turn aside at the beck of the master 
just as well as if she had been all the while fritter- 
ing herself away, and she will also be a great deal 
better worth beckoning to. The entrance upon a 
" career " does not, as many seem to think and 
fear, prescribe perpetual adherence to it. 

A girl may have a certain end in view, and 
design most clearly to follow it, and she does fol- 
low it — God bless her ! But Nature also has her 
ends, and when her unerring finger points in an- 
other quarter, " This is the way, walk ye in it," 
be sure the girl will go. Activity will never keep 
her from happiness, but it will keep her from by- 
ways and stumbling-blocks, from the traps which 
Nature never set, but which a sentimentalism, bora 
of selfishness, has put in her path. And be doubly 
sure of this : if one or two or a dozen years of in- 



60 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

duslry and resolution unfit a girl to be a wife, she 
would never have been a prize. Any i^telligent 
girl can learn household science in six months, 
and every girl ought to have, and generally does 
h^ve, at least six months' warning. Experience 
will do the rest for her, and do it well, if she is 
a girl of sense; and if not, nothing would have 
helped the matter. One of the best cooks I know 
started in life with only a cabbage for capital ; and 
with sense and spirit, out of that solitary cabbage, 
with whose proper management she chanced to be 
acquainted, sprang pies, puddings, preserves, such 
as it is not well even to thmk of in war-times. 

So much for that portion of the objection which 
is put forward and has a just foundation. But the 
main part of it is under ground. In my opinion, 
the real danger lies in quite the opposite quarter 
from the one that is sought to be defended. The 
trouble is not that women do not think enough 
about household affairs. It is that they think too 
much. But if one might judge from the tenor of 
public and private talk, one would suppose that 
cooking was the chief end of woman and the chief 
solace of man. I distinguish cooking above all the 
other items of the domestic establishment, because 
I find it so distinguished before me. Four hun- 
dred volumes of papyrus, recovered from Hercu- 
laneum, related chiefly to music, rhetoric, and 
cookery. The god of whom Paul told the Philip- 
pians, even weeping, is worshipped to-day. Isaac 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 61 

acted after his kind when he loved Esau because 
he did eat of his venison ! To know how to cook, 
to keep the husband in good humor with tempt- 
ing viands, to prevent his being annoyed with 
burnt meat, soured with heavy bread, or vexed 
by late dinners, is the burden of a thousand ditties 
besides that of our sarcastic sonneteer. Printed 
" Advice to Marriageable Young Ladies " informs 
them that " a man is better pleased when he 
has a good dinner upon his. table, than when his 
wife talks good French."/ i should like to be 
absolute monarch of America long enough to en- 
act a decree that every man who opens his mouth 
to tell girls to learn to make bread, shall live a 
week on putty and w^ater. What ! are girls then 
to neglect to learn to make bread ? By no means. 
Nor to roast beef, nor to boil potatoes. But sup- 
pose General Hooker should lead out his whole 
army against a detachment of the Rebels, and, 
neglecting Lee and Jackson with their myrmi- 
dons, should expend all his ammunition and skill 
on a handful of the foe, would you not adjudge 
him worthy of court-martial ? But the detachment 
ought to be captured. Perhaps it ought. Send 
out a detachment and capture it. But do not 
waste your whole strength on an awkward squad, 
and leave the main body of the enemy to ravage 
at will. Defeat the latter, and the former will 
disappear of themselves. 

Now when you bring out your drums and beat 



62 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

your dismal tattoo about learning to cook, you are 
doing just this ; you are devoting all your strength 
to the destruction of an outwork whose fall will 
but very remotely affect the citadel. The remedy 
for an ignorance of cookery is not necessarily a 
knowledge of cookery. What is the reason that a 
man has cause to complain that his wife does not 
know how to cook ? Is it that she devoted too 
much of her maiden time to teaching, preaching, 
doctoring, and dressmaking ? Ten thousand to 
one, no. It is because she is ignorant or because 
she is silly. Treat girls sensibly. Educate their 
observation, their perception, their judgment. Give 
them a knowledge of human nature : and then be 
yourself so noble as to command their respect, 
and so amiable as to secure their affection, and 
you will have no trouble with heavy bread. If 
you insist on making w^omen ignorant and silly, 
be sure their ignorance and silliness will crop out. 
Thrust them down in one place, and they will im- 
mediately rise in another. Sooner or later, you 
will prove the truth of Lord Burleigh's assurance 
to his son, and " find to your regret that there is 
nothing more fulsome than a she- fool." 

But the general direction of your counsel is 
wrong, even supposing the immediate object at 
which it is aimed to be right. Its tendency is to 
induce women to give more attention to cookery 
than they now do ; and they already devote to it 
a great deal more than they ought. They do not 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 63 

cook too well, but too much. A few mixtures 
should be better arranged than now, but a great 
many should be left alone. Cooking is the chief 
concern of a very large number of New England 
wives and mothers. They spend the larger part 
of their ingenuity in devising, and the larger 
part of their strength and skill and time in pre- 
paring, food which is unnecessary and often hurt- 
ful. It never occurs to them to alter their course. 
They do not think of it as an unjust conjugal ex- 
action, but as a Divine allotment. It is not always 
the one, and seldom if ever the other ; but it is a 
custom. We are pre-eminently an eating people. 
Our women are cooking themselves to death, and 
cooking the nation into a materialism worse than 
death. Suppose you have been boarding or visit- 
ing for a month or two in a stranger family, and 
some one asks you if they live well, what do you 
understand him to mean ? Is he inquiring if they 
are honorable, if they conduct their lives on Chris- 
tian principles, if they are courteous, and self- 
respectful and self-controlled ? Are they just in 
their dealings, disinterested in their motives, pure 
in word and work ? Nothing is further from his 
thoughts. He means — and you at once under- 
stand him — Do they have highly-spiced and nu- 
merous meats, much cake and pie, many sauces 
and preserves ? To what degradation have we de- 
scended ! To live well is to eat rich food ! Honor, 
integrity, refinement, culture, are all chopped up 



64 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

into mince-pie. Heart and soul are left to shift 
for themselves, and the guaranty of right and 
righteous living is 

" A fair round belly with good capon lined." 

In the olden times there lived, we are told, a 
race of men called Bisclaverets, who were half man 
and half wolf; or, to speak more accurately, were 
half the time man and half the time wolf. Some 
indications in our own day lead us to believe that 
the race of the Bisclaverets is not wholly extinct. 
Some stragglers must have found their way from 
the shores of Bretagne to our Western wilds, and 
left a posterity whose name is Legion. I copy 
from one of the most prominent and liberal of our 
religious newspapers the following " elegant ex- 
tract," not original in its columns, but adopted 
from some other paper, with such undoubted in- 
dorsement and commendation as an insertion 
without comment implies : — 

" The business man who has been at work hard 
all day, will enter his house for dinner as crabbed 
as a hungry bear, — crabbed because he is as hun- 
gry as a hungry bear. The wife understands the 
mood, and, while she says little to him, is careful 
not to have the dinner delayed. In the mean time, 
the children watch him cautiously, and do not tease 
him with questions. When the soup is gulped, and 
he leans back and wipes his mouth, there is an evi- 
dent relaxation, and his wife ventures to ask for the 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. e5 

news. When the roast beef is disposed of, she pre- 
sumes upon gossip, and possibly upon a jest ; and 
when, at last, the dessert is spread upon the table, 
all hands are merry, and the face of the husband 
and father, which entered the house so pinched, 
and savage, and sharp, becomes soft, and full, and 
beaming as the face of the round summer moon." 

Are we talking about a man or a wild beast? 
Is it wife or female ? Are they children or cubs ? 
Does he wipe his mouth or lick his chops ? " Ven- 
tures to ask the news " ! " Presumes upon a jest " ! 
r The whole picture is disgusting from beginning to 
end. It is the portraiture of sensuality and des- 
potism. Hunger is not a sublime sensation, nor is 
eating a graceful act ; but both are ordained of 
God, and are given us with that broad blank mar- 
gin which almost invariably accompanies His gifts. 
Religion and culture can take up the necessity, and 
work so deftly that it shall become an adornment ; 
and the ordinance of eating stand for the sunniest 
part of life. The grossness of the act, the mere 
animal and mechanical function of furnishing sup- 
plies, can be so larded with wit and wisdom, with 
love and good- will, with pleasant talk, interchange 
of civilities and courtesies, and all the light, sweet, 
gentle amenities of life, that a bare act becomes 
almost a rite. The rough structure is veiled into 
beauty with roses and lilies and the soft play of 
lights and shadows. But this paragraph portrays 
gobbling. A woman, instead of pandering to it 



66 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

by service and silence, ought to lift up her voice 
and repress it in its earliest stages. Make a man 
understand that he shall eat his dinner like a gen- 
tleman or he shall have no dinner to eat. ( If he 
will be crabbed and gulp, let him go down into the 
coal-bin and have it out alonej but do not let him 
bring his Feejeeism into the dining-room to defile 
the presence of his wife and corrupt the manners 
of his children. 

If you think the picture is overdrawn, I pray 
you to remember that I did not draw it. It is a 
published, and, I think, a man's sketch of manhood. 
I only take it as I find it. I do not myself think 
that materialism has attained quite that degree of 
repulsiA^eness, but it is too near it. Eating is not 
perpetrated, but the appetite is pampered. If a 
man is able to hire a cook, very well. Cooking is 
the cook's profession ; she ought to attain skill, and 
her employer has a right to require it, and as great 
a variety and profusion of dishes as he can furnish 
material for. But if he is not able to hire a cook, 
and must depend entirely upon his wife, the case 
is different. Cooking is not her profession. It is 
only one of the duties incident to her station. It 
is incumbent upon her to spread a plentiful and 
wholesome table. It is culpable inefficiency to 
do less than this. It is palpable immorality to do 
more. No matter how fond of cooking, or how 
skilful or alert a woman may be, she has only 
twenty-four hours in her day, and two hands for 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 67 

her work ; and one woman who has the sole care 
of a family cannot, if she has any rational and 
Christian idea of life, of personal, household, and 
social duties, have any more time and strength than 
is sufficient for their simple discharge. Overdoing 
in one direction must be compensated by underdo- 
ing in another. She cannot pamper Peter without 
pinching Paul. Much that you laud as a virtue I 
lament as a vice. You revel in the cakes and the 
pastries and the dainties, and boast the skill of 
the housewife ; and indeed her marvels are featly 
wrought, sweet to the taste, and to be desired if 
honestly come by ; but if there has been plunder 
and extortion, if it is a soul that flakes in the pas- 
try, if it is a heart that is embrowned in the gravies, 
if leisure and freshness and breadth of sympathy 
and keen enjoyment have been frittered away on 
the fritters, and simmered away in the sweetmeats, 
and battered away in the puddings, give me, I pray 
you, a dinner of herbs. Johnnj^-cake was royal 
fare in Walden woods when a king prepared the 
banquet and presided at the board. Peacocks' 
tongues are but common meat to peacocks. 

The pdte de foie gras is a monstrous dish. A 
goose is kept in some warm, confined place that 
precludes any extended motion, and fed with fat- 
tening food, so that his liver enlarges through dis- 
ease till it is considered fit to be made into a pie, 
— a luxury to epicures, but a horror to any health- 
ful person. Just such a goose is many a woman, 



68 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

* 
confined by custom and her consenting will in a 

warm, narrow kitchen, only instead of her liver 
it is her life which she herself makes up into pies ; 
but the pastry which you find so delicious seems 
to me disease. 

The ancients buried in urns the ashes of their 
bodies : we deposit in urns the ashes of our souls, 
and pass them around at the tea-table. 

i Women not only injure themselves by what they 
neglect, but injure others by what they perform. 
Such stress is laid upon the commissary department, 
that they lose discrimination, and come to think 
that dainty morsels are a panacea for all the ills 
of the flesh, instead of being the chief cause of most 
of them. I knew a young wife whose husband 
used to come down from his study worn and weary 
with much brain-work, his muscles flaccid, his eyes 
heavy, his circulation sluggish, and she w^ould come 
up from the kitchen her face all aglow with eager- 
ness and love and cooking-stove heat, her hands 
full of abominable little messes which she had been 
plotting against him, reeking with butter and sugar, 
and all manner of glorified greasiness, — I am hap- 
py to say I do not know by what name she called 
her machinations, but I call them broiled dyspep- 
sia, toasted indigestions, fricasseed nightmare, — 
and the poor husband would nibble here and nibble 
there, sure of grim consequences, but loath to seem 
a churl by indifiference, and neither give nor take 
satisfaction. I could bear his suffering with great 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 69 

equanimity, for there was a poetic justice in it, 
though he himself was not a sinner above others, 
nor yet so much as many. If only those men 
who are continually preaching the larder could be 
forced, sick or well, to swallow every combination 
which the fertile feminine brain can devise, and 
the nimble feminine fingers accomplish, I should 
listen to their exhortations with the most lively 
satisfaction. But even that would not atone for 
the female suffering. With what disconsolate 
countenance would my tender, anxious young 
wife ring the bell and send away the scarcely- 
diminished dish-lings, and wonder in her fond 
tortured heart what next she could do to smooth 
the wrinkled brow and light up the dull eyes, and 
so revolve perpetually in her troubled mind the 
mysterious question that loomed up mystically 
before us all in our Mother Goose days, ''Why 
did n't Jack eat his supper ? " 

Why ? O sweet and silly little wife ? Because 
he wanted a thorough shaking-up. Because mind 
and body were flabby from too long poring over his 
books. If you could but have performed the im- 
possible ; if you could but have parted with the 
feeble cant which you had imbibed from infancy ; 
if you would but have driven him out alike from 
his study and your sitting-room, going with him, 
if such inducement became necessary, into the 
fresh air ; if you would but have walked him, or 
worked him, or in some way kneaded him into 



70 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

firm, hard thew and sinew, and kept him out and 
active till he should have got such an appetite 
that cold brown bread and molasses would have 
seemed to him a dish fit to set before a king, you 
would have done him true wifely service. Then 
you might have come home and fed him with but- 
ter and sugar to your heart's content, — and not to 
the perpetual discontent and rebellion of his body. 

But among all the lectures to young wives or 
old wives or no wives at all, I never heard or read 
one that counselled a woman to take her husband 
out walking, or rowing, or riding, or driving, or 
bowling, or do any other sensible thing. I have 
dived into oceans of nonsense, but never found the 
pearl. 

Our New England people considers itself to have 
advanced much further in civilization than the ab- 
origines, whose chief occupation, according to the 
histories, is hunting and fishing. But why is it 
barbarous to devote your life to procuring food, 
and civilized to devote your life to cooking it ? Of 
the two, I think I should prefer the former. The 
Savage may not present an inviting bill of fare ; 
but the excitement of the chase, the close contact 
w^ith nature, the wide fireedom of sea and sky, the 
grand play of all the powers, the mighty strength- 
ening of all the organs, the fine culture of the 
senses, the health and vigor of every nerve and 
tissue, the leap and sparkle of all the springs of 
life, this, surely, would be no insignificant compen- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 



71 



satlon : but a continual pottering over gridirons and 
frying-pans is good for neither brain nor brawn. 
Civilization may quick up fly and kick the beam : I 
would much rather be a good Sioux Indian than 
most New England housewives. 




VI 




^^^^^) HE much talk of fitness for marriage 
' "~ ^" leads one to reflect on the advantages 
of living in the nineteenth century. 
^^ With all the sevring-machines, wash- 
ing-machines, w^ringing-machines, carpet-sweepers, 
cooking-ranges, and the innumerable devices by 
which labor is sought and is supposed to be saved, 
I do not see that there is any great gain. The re- 
quirements of civilized society rather more than 
keep abreast with the inventions of civilized inge- 
nuity. Fifty years ago a bonnet cost twenty dol- 
lars. Now a comely bonnet can be bought for one 
dollar. But the twenty-dollar bonnet lasted ten 
years, and the one-dollar bonnet three months, so 
that, notwithstanding the superior cheapness of 
the material, the item bonnet costs more money 
than it used, and vastly more time and thought. 
A calico dress was not deemed unreasonable at 
seventy cents a yard. Lately it could be had for 
twelve and a half: but at seventy-five cents it was 
an heirloom, while at twelve and a half it stands 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 73 

over the wash-tub by the second year, and by the 
third goes' into the rag-bag. The lively sewing- 
machine runs up a seam twenty times as swiftly 
as the most lively fingers : but there are twenty 
times as many seams to run up. Just as fast as 
skill " turns off" work, just so fast fashion turns it 
on. Nay, fashion in heaping up entirely outstrips 
ingenuity in lowering the pile of work ; so that 
we do not get the benefit of our skill. The day 
now is no longer than the day of fifty years ago. 
The mother of five children seems to have no more 
time for educating her five children, for enjoying 
and training their opening lives, for studying their 
characters, for associating with them and acquiring 
their confidence, for planting unexpected roses in 
the little flower-plats of their years, for sitting a 
whole summer day with them among the beauties 
and wonders and delights of the woods, for spending 
a whole winter evening with them in games and 
reading, for informing her own mind and disci- 
plining her own heart and strengthening and beau- 
tifying her own body, for cultivating the possible 
beneficences of society, for genial and growing 
acquaintance and sympathy with the poets, the 
philosophers, the historians, and the sages, than the 
mother of five children had fifty years ago. I 
suppose more women now-a-days know how to 
read and write ; but do they read and write ? Of 
the people in your village, your street, your sew- 
ing-society : how many do you find who spend as 



74 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

much as an hour a day in reading Milton, or Chau- 
cer, or Spenser, or Tennyson, or Mrs. Browning ? 
How many are there who are famihar with Hume, 
or Robertson, or Macaulay, or Motley, or Palfrey ? 
How many have lingered with delight over the 
pages of Lord Bacon, or Jeremy Taylor, or John 
Stuart Mill? How many know the relation be- 
tween a cat and a tiger, or what are the ingredi- 
ents of buttermilk, or why yeast makes bread rise, or 
how the heat of the oven works, or whether a clo- 
verhead has anything to do with a marrowfat pea ? 
How many are interested to peer into the myste- 
ries of the heavens above or the earth beneath or 
the waters under the earth ? How many ever heard 
of the Areopigitica or the Witena-gemot, or discern 
any connection between Runnymede and Fort 
Sumter, or have the faintest opinion as to whether 
Runnymede is a man or a mouse ? How many can 
tell you whether the Reformation was a revelation 
confronting a superstition or a fi^uitful branch graft- 
ed upon a barren olive-tree, or an old religion 
throwing off the layers of acquired corruption? 
How many understand the origin and bearings of 
CaMnism or the Nicene Creed or the Pauline 
Epistles ? I speak, you see, not of things which 
have passed away leaving only a slender and hid- 
den thread of connection, but of those which still 
touch life at many points. The great boast of the 
present day is the dissemination of knowledge : 
but knowledge is trash if it is not assimilated into 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 75 

wisdom. Knowledge which is simply plastered on 
to the outside of the soul and does not chemically 
combine to become part and parcel of the soul's 
substance, produces an eflFect little better than gro- 
tesque. Names and dates may store the memory ; 
but why have the memory stored if you do not 
use its treasures ? What better off am I for hav- 
ing a heap of isolated facts in my lumber-room if 
I have nothing for those facts to do ? I may know 
in what year the battle of Hastings was fought, 
but unless I can locate that battle otherwhere than 
in geography and chronology, I might as well have 
committed to the charge of my memory the youth- 
ful facts of 

'' Onery Twoerv ickery see, 
Halibut crackibnt pendalee. 
Pin pon musket John, 
Triddle traddlecome Twenty-one/' 

Bricks and boards are neither shelter from wind 
nor shade from sun. It is only when all are fitly 
framed too;ether into the streno;th and sweetness 
of spirit that they become the temple of the living 
God, whereinto Shekinah shall come. We talk 
about the universal circulation of newspapers, but 
sometimes it seems to me that newspapers are only 
an enormous expansion of village gossip. Now if 
a murder is committed in New York we hear of 
it, whereas formerly we did not know it unless it 
were committed in the next town. But such 
knowledge we could very readily dispense with. 



76 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

Is anything added to the worth of life by learning 
that Bridget McArthy has been fined five dollars 
and costs for breaking Ellen Maloney's windows. 
In the old wars, it was three weeks after a victory 
was gained before you heard of it ; now you hear 
of it six months before the battle is fought, and 
after all it turns out to be no victory, but a master- 
piece of strategy.* What I wish to know is this : 
does the constant interflow of currents really deep- 
en and broaden the channel of life ? Are women 
any stronger of will, firmer of purpose, broader of 
view, sounder of judgment, than they used to be ? 
Can they front fortune with serener brow, unawed 
by her malice, unflattered by her promise, un- 
moved by her caprice ? Are they any more in- 
dependent of the circumstances of life, any more 
concentrated in its essence ? Do they think more 
deeply, love more nobly, live more spiritually? 
Are they any more divorced from the lust of the 
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life ; 
any more wedded to whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report ? 

I think we are in a transition-state. The in- 
creased facilities of labor are improvements, and 
we shall by and by reap the fruits of them ; but 

* Heaven be praised that the course of events has blunted the 
point of this sentence. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 77 

we have hardly yet done so. We have lassoed 
our wild horse, but we have not harnessed him. 
He shows us wonderful freaks of strength, but he 
drags us quite as often as we drive him. '' Sweet 
Puck " has been caught, and made to put his girdle 
round about the earth in forty minutes ; in 

" one night, ere glimpse of morn, 
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn, 
That ten day-laborers could not end/' 

But he is not yet tamed down into a trustworthy 
domestic drudge. If he does not actually trans- 
mute himself into a Robin Goodfellow, that bootless 
makes the breathless housewife churn, and the 
drink to bear no barm, and mislead night-wander- 
ers, he yet annuls his work, shutting the eyes of 
the ten day-laborers so that they do not gain rest for 
his interference ; his earth-girdle binds no bundle 
of myrrh for the well-beloved. Our great diffusion 
of knowledge has not given us corresponding mas- 
tery. Our knives are sharper, but we only whittle. 
Knowledge is poured abroad, but it is not absorbed. 
Yet the hour approaches. By and by, out of this 
wishy-washy chaos, slowly shall arise the coast-line 
of a new continent whereon the redeemed shall 
walk : meanwhile, do not let us deceive ourselves. 
The millennium is not yet come. We are scarcely 
beyond the multiplication- table of our mathemat- 
ics. We are blind and blundering, and for all 
our skill and science, we stumble through life but 
little wiser than our fathers. We have the swift, 



78 ^ A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

clean stove-oven for the cumbrous old bake-kettle, 
but meanwhile we have lost the fireside, and have 
found no substitute ; and a man's life lies not in 
ovens or bake-kettles, but in firesides. 

This truth needs to be engraven on our brains 
and hearts with a pen of iron and the point of a 
diamond. The soul is the king and not the servant 
of the body. Every device, every invention, every 
measure, that does not subserve the interests of the 
soul, is worthless. Every invention that may sub- 
serve those interests, but stops short of such subser- 
viency, stops so far short of its goal. If the cook- 
ing-range only makes that mince-pie be eaten once 
a day instead of once a year ; if steam-power only 
causes that fine w^heat-bread shall take the place 
of coarse corn-bread ; if sewing-machines are going 
to give women more tucks to their skirts, more 
flounces to their gowns, more dresses to their 
wardrobes, and not more hours to their day, we 
might just as well be without the sewing-machines 
and the cooking-ranges and the steam-power. Is 
a woman any better, or any better off^ for having 
six gowns where her mother had three ? Is she 
not worse off? She can wear but one at a time, 
and she is expending brain-power and heart-power, 
and lifting the incidents of life into the sphere of 
its essentials. There are women who buy dresses, 
and make them, and hang them up in their closets, 
there to remain till the fashion changes, and the 
dress has to be re-made without having been once 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 79 

worn. O terrible emptiness of life which this sig- 
nalizes ! O wanton and wicked waste of priceless 
treasures ! What shall be said in the day when 
God maketh inquisition ? I wage no war against 
the aesthetics of life ; but I do protest that they 
shall be means and not ends. Let richness drape 
the form, and variety crown the board, and luxury 
fill the house, if so be you do not wrong the king, 
the Master. There need be no other limitation. 
Wrong to one's self involves and implies all other 
wrong. Nothing human is foreign to any man. 
Nothing personal is foreign to humanity. You 
cannot defraud yourself of your birthright with- 
out defrauding all those to whom your birthright 
might bring blessings. The keenest barb of your 
injustice to another pierces your own breast. 

But the larger number of New England families 
earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and 
must sacrifice the one or the other, — the soul or 
the body. They cannot command both luxury 
and life ; and they choose — which ? Look around 
and answer. How many houses do you know 
that have no carpets on the floors, no cushions in 
the chairs, no paper on the walls, no silks in the 
wardrobes, no china in the closets, but plenty of 
books in the library ; a harp, a piano, a violin, in 
one corner, an easel, a box of crayons in another ; 
an aquarium by the window, a camp-stool in the 
cupboard, a fishing-rod on the shelf, a portfolio on 
the table ; where pies and fries and cakes and 



80 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

preserves and pickles and puddings seldom come ; 
where flounces and velvets and feathers and em- 
broideries are unseen, but where the walls are 
adorned with drawings from the mother's own 
hands, with bouquets, finely selected, pressed and 
arranged by the daughters ; with cabinets of min- 
erals gathered, classified, and labelled by the sons ; 
and fresh flowers from the garden, cultivated and 
culled by the father ; where the homely fare is 
seasoned wdth Attic salt ; where wit and wisdom 
and sprightliness and fun and heart's-ease make 
the simple, wholesome, and plentiful meal a fit 
banquet for gods ; where work is w^ork, and not 
simply labor ; where rest is change, and not simply 
torpidity ; where the heart is rich in love, and the 
head rich in lore, and intellect and afffection go 
hand in hand ; where the inmates are not the 
creatures of the house, but the house is the dear 
handiwork of the inmates ; where they derive no 
lustre from their dwelling, but shine all through it 
with such sweet, soft lights, that elegance waits 
upon their footsteps, beauty lingers upon their 
brows, every spot which they tread is enchanted 
groiind, every room which they enter is the au- 
dience-chamber of a king. On the other hand, 
how many houses do you know where everything 
is in abundance except that which alone gives 
abundance its value ? Where moss-soft carpets 
and heavy curtains and gilded cornices and silver 
and china and sumptuous fare make a glittering 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 81 

pageant, but work and worry and weariness, or 
frivolous pleasures and frivolous interests, empty- 
life of all its priceless possessions. How many do 
you know where neither wealth nor worth reigns ? 
Where hard, grinding, pinching toil is all that the 
evening and the morning have to give, and every- 
thing lovely to the eye and pleasant to the soul is 
crushed between the upper and the nether mill- 
stones ? How many young couples think they 
could begin housekeeping without a carpet for the 
parlor floor ? How many think of providing that 
parlor with a score of the rich, ripe, mellow Eng- 
lish classics? But to the end of the days, the 
authors will be a joy and strength and consola- 
tion, and the carpet will be only a dusty woollen 
rag. No, no ; we cannot give up our trappings. 
Such is the poverty of our life, and we may not 
uncover its nakedness. We must have jewels and 
gold to hide our squalor and our leanness. It is 
tinsel or nothing. Take away our fine clothes, 
our fine furniture, our much eating and drinking, 
and what is left ? True, — what is left ? Va- 
cancy and desolation. Suppose the work and 
worry to be suddenly abrogated to the degree that 
the thousands of harassed women who toil with 
broom or needle or dish-cloth or kneading-trough 
from morning till night should suddenly find on 
their hands four hours every day of leisure, — 
leisure that absolutely need be filled up by no 
family knitting, mending, or oversight, — would it 

4 * F 



82 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

he a boon ? In many cases I greatly fear not. 
After the first luxury of utter rest from strenuous 
work, I greatly fear that that four hours would be 
the dullest and dreariest part of the day, and its 
close more gladly welcomed than its commence- 
ment. But this only shows the need, not the im- 
possibility, of reformation. If it has come to this, 
that we know not what to do with ourselves, shall 
we go on providing toys, or shall we turn about 
and straightway learn self-direction ? Is it so that 
we must fill our lives with husks, because we have 
fed on them so long that we have no reh'sh for 
nourishing food ? Have we so held in abeyance 
our spiritual forces that they have lost their Hfe ? 
Have we so given ourselves to our grosser uses, 
that they have usurped the throne, and shall we 
now make no effort to depose them and restore 
the rightful lord ? Shall we go on forming and 
frocking our wax dolls, and give no heed to the 
marble which it is our life-work to fashion into the 
image and likeness of God ? Better Romulus and 
Remus, suckled by a wolf, than our puny nurshngs 
of conventionality ! O for men and women with 
blood in their veins, and muscles in their bodies, 
and brains in their skulls, — men and women who 
believe in their manhood and their womanhood I 
who will be as valiant, as aggressive, as enduring 
in peace as they are showing themselves in war, 
who dare stand erect, who will walk their own 
paths, who' brave solitudes, who see things and not 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 83 

the traditions of things, who will blow away, with 
one honest breath, our shabby gew-gaw finery ! 
America was founded on the rights of man : why 
do we set our affections on silks and satins ? Why 
entangle our young limb^ with the fetters of an 
old civilization, golden though they be ? Never 
had any nation such opportunity as ours. Here is 
the race-course ready, the battle-ground prepared. 
It needs only that we be swift and strong. There 
are no morasses of old prejudice to beguile our feet, 
no tangle of old growths to retard our progress. 
We have no institutions to fight against : all our in- 
stitutions fight with us. No garter, no ribbon, no 
courtly presentation^ is demanded as our stamp of 
rank ; the badge of each man's order is set on 
his brow and breast. Worth needs not to have 
flowed down through musty ages if it would re- 
ceive its meed ; every man bears his seal direct 
from God. Humanity is more accounted of than 
a coat of arms. We have only to be noble, and 
we belong at once to the nobility. It is ourselves 
alone that will fail if there be failure ; not oppor- 
tunity. It is for us to rise to the height of the 
great argument. It is only that we reverence 
ourselves, that we esteem man as of greater mark 
than his meat or his raiment. Give us full and 
free development. Tear away these gilded fetters, 
and let the children of God have free course to 
run and be glorified. Throw off allegiance to 
trifles, and with the heart believe, and with the 



84 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

mouth make confession, and with the upright life 
attest: There is no God but God. 

This can be done only when women and men 
will work together to the same end. It is not to 
be done by stripping away the restraints of fashion 
and society and leaving life bare of its proprieties. 
Deformity is not lovely by being exposed. What 
we are to do is to supplant those restraints by the 
gentle growths of a larger and finer culture ; to 
replace meagreness with rounded beauty ; to make 
the life so rich and full that all else shall seem poor 
in comparison ; to show it so fair and fertile that 
every luxury shall seem but its natural outgrowth, 
its proper adornment ; to make the soul so simply 
dominant as to give their laws to fashion and so- 
ciety instead of receiving laws from them, and so 
have fashion and society for its nimble servitors in- 
stead of being itself their creature and slave. Is 
it not so now? Who dares bend social life to his 
uses ? Who dares run counter to its caprices ? 
Who dares stand on his own dignity and defy its 
frown or sneer ? But, you say, this adaptation of 
one's self to others is what Christianity requires. 
This self-seeking, this self-elevation, is directly op- 
posed to the spirit of the Gospel, which demands 
that every one seek not his own, but the things 
which are another's. Not at all. You can in no 
other way benefit your generation than through 
your own heart and life. Can a stream rise higher 
than its fountain ? Can a corrupt tree bring forth 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 85 

good fruits ? The Apostle says : Let no man seek 
his own, but every man another's wealth. Does 
that mean that a farmer must not plough his own 
field, or plant his own corn, or hoe his own pota- 
toes, but go over to till his neighbor's farm and 
leave his own fallow ? But it is written, '' He that 
provideth not for his own house hath denied the 
faith, and is worse than an infidel," and common 
sense need not be propped up by revelation, for it 
stands firmly on the same ground. You say a 
woman must not be thinking of herself, her own 
growth and good all the time. So do I. But is 
she to obtain and exhibit self-forgetfulness by self- 
culture, or self-neglect ? Will you be most likely 
to forget your head by thoroughly combing and 
brushing your hair every morning, or by brushing 
it not at all ? Does not health consist in having 
your organs in such a condition th^t you do not 
know you have organs ? A dyspeptic man is the 
most subjective person in the world. He thinks 
more about himself in a week than a well person 
does in a year. The true way for women and men 
to be thoroughly self-forgetful, is to be so thor- 
oughly self-cultured, so healthy, so normal, so 
perfect, that all they have to do is their work. 
Themselves are perfectly transparent. No head- 
aches and heartaches interpose between themselves 
and their duties. They are not forced back to 
concentrate their interest on a torpid liver, or tu- 
bercled lungs. They are not wasting their power 



86 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

by working in constant jar and clash. They are 
at full liberty to bring means to bear on ends. 
And just in proportion as sound minds have sound 
bodies, will people be able to forget themselves and 
do good to others. 

Now — the connection between some of my 
paragraphs may be a little underground, but it 
is always there. If you don't quite see it, you 
must jump. If I should stop to say everything, I 
should never get through. I am not sure I shall, 
as it is — now, such has been the amount of glut- 
tony, and all manner of frivolity and materialism, 
indirectly but strenuously inculcated by literature, 
that we are arrived at a point where they are 
almost the strongest grappling-hooks between the 
sexes. Understand : I am not saying that dress 
is frivolity. Dress is development. A woman's 
dress is not her first duty, but it follows closely on 
first duty's heels. She should dress so as to be 
grateful to her husband's eye, I grant, nay, I en- 
join : and he is under equally strong obligations to 
dress so as to be grateful to her eye. But this is 
scarcely a matter of expense. It need not cost, 
appreciably, more to be neat and tasteful than it 
does to be dowdy and slouching. But, I have 
heard women say, variety in dress is necessary in 
order that a husband may not be wearied. But 
does a man ever think of having several winter 
coats or summer waistcoats, so that his wife may 
not weary of him ? Does she ever think of being 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 87 

tired of seeing one hat till it begins to look shabby ? 
And if a man buys his clothes and wears them 
according to his needs, — which is quite right, — 
why shall not a woman do the same ? Is there 
any law or gospel for forcing a woman to be pleas- 
ing to her husband, while the husband is left to do 
that which is right in his own eyes ? Or are the 
visual organs of a man so much more exquisitely 
arranged than those of a woman, that special adap- 
tations must be made to them, while a woman may 
see whatever happens to be a la mode ? Or has a 
man's dress intrinsically so much more beauty and 
character than a woman's, that less pains need be 
taken to make it charming ? 

But granting to variety all the importance that 
is claimed for it, are we using the lever to advan- 
tage ? Suppose the gown is changed every day, 
while the face above it never varies, or varies only 
from one vapidity to another, and what is gained ? 
If variety is the desideratum, why not attempt it in 
the direction in which variety is spontaneous, re- 
sultant, and always delightful ? You may flit from 
brown merino to blue poplin, and from blue poplin 
to black alpaca, and be queen of all that is tire- 
some still. But enlarge every day the horizon of 
your heart : be tuneful on Monday with the birds ; 
be fragrant on Tuesday among your roses ; be 
thoughtful on Wednesday with the sages ; be 
chemical on Thursday over your bread-trough ; 
be prophetic on Friday with history ; be aspiring 



88 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

on Saturday in spite of broom and duster ; be lib- 
eral and catholic on Sunday : be fresh and genial 
and natural and blooming with the dews that are 
ready to gather on every smallest grass-blade of 
life, and a pink-sprigged muslin will be new for a 
whole season, yes, and half a dozen of them. Take 
example from the toad : swallow your dress ; not pre- 
cisely in the same sense, but as effectually. Over- 
power, subordinate your dress, till it shall be only a 
second cuticle, not to be distinguished from yourself, 
but a natural element of your universal harmony. 
What are you going to wear to church this sum- 
mer ? I say church, because I am speaking now 
to people whose best dress is their Sunday dress. 
I am not writing for the Newport and Niagara 
frequenters, who know no currency smaller than 
gold eagles. You will not have many new clothes 
because it is " war-times," but you must have 
a silk mantle ; that will cost fifteen dollars. You 
could have bought one last summer for ten dol- 
lars, but silk is now higher. You will have a 
barege dress, which, with the increased price of 
linings and trimmings and making, will cost before 
it is ready to be worn fifteen more. Your gloves 
wdll be a dollar and a half, and your bonnet, whit- 
ened and newly trimmed with last summer's rib* 
bon, will be three dollars or so. The whole cost 
will be about thirty-five dollars. But suppose, in- 
stead of a barege gown and silk shawl, you had 
bought a pretty gingham and had it made in the 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 89 

same way, dress and mantle alike, and had taken 
that for your summer outfit ; and had substituted 
for your kid gloves a pair of Lisle-thread at sixty- 
two cents. The gingham will last longer than the 
barege, and will be good for more uses after it is 
jDutworn as a dress. It will last as long in the 
mantle as the shape of the mantle will be fashion- 
able, and then it will make over as economically, 
and into a larger number of articles. The Lisle- 
thread gloves will last as long as the kid, and will 
be much better on the whole, because they will 
wash. '' But I should make a figure, walking up 
the broad aisle in a gingham mantilla ! " Be sure 
you would, and a very pretty figure too. For you 
look, in it, perfectly fresh and tidy ; and because 
you have not been fagged and fretted with its great 
cost you will be quite happy and pleased, and that 
pleasure will beam out in your face and figure, and 
your young, elastic tread ; and there is not a man 
in church who will suspect that everything is not 
precisely as it should be. Men judge in generals, 
not in particulars ; and the few who are conversant 
with minutiae, and look beyond the facts of becom- 
ingness or unbecomingness into the question of 
texture and fabric, are such miscroscopic sort of 
men that you do not value their opinion one way 
or the other. You are triumphant so far as the 
men are concerned. 

The women will not let you off so easily. Mrs. 
Judkins will think you are '' very odd " ; but how 



90 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

much better to be oddly right than evenly wrong ! 
Mrs. Jenkins will call it real mean^ when you are as 
well able to dress decently as she is ! But you are 
the very plant and flower of decency. Mrs. Per- 
kins will hate to see people try to be different from 
other folks. Ah ! Mrs. Perkins, when the vapor 
from your heated face goes down to-morrow meet- 
ing the vapor that comes steaming up from your 
foaming tub, will you find it any consolation for 
your heat and fatigue that you went to church yes- 
terday and are broiling over your wash-tub to-day 
" like other folks." Meanwhile you, by your ging- 
ham, have saved ten dollars. Ten dollars ! I am 
lost in amazement when I think of the good that 
may be accomplished with ten dollars ! For ten 
dollars you can hire a washerwoman all summer 
and save — absolutely add to your life six hours 
every Monday for three months ; look at the read- 
ing, the writing, the conversation, the enjoyment 
that can be crowded into an hour, and then multi- 
ply it by seventy-five, and say whether your ging- 
ham dress be not a very robe of royalty. And 
besides the good you do yourself, and the good that 
will shine from you upon all around you, you will 
be helping to solve the great problem of the age : 
you will be helping to give employment to the 
thousands of women who are perishing for lack of 
something to do, and dragging society down with 
them. You will be setting supply and demand face 
to face. If you could but induce a few of your 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 91 

neighbors to join you, — which they will be glad 
to do when they see how happy and fresh, it makes 
you, — the employment you would furnish would 
comfortably support some destitute unmarried 
woman, or some childless widow, and go far to- 
wards providing bread and butter, perhaps shoes 
and stockings, possibly spelling-books, to a family 
of children. There are, possibly, as many women 
who need to do more than they are doing as there 
are who need to do less, and you will be helping 
to restore or create the desired equilibrium. Or, 
if you choose instead, ten dollars will take your rus- 
tic little ones into the city to stock and startle their 
minds with ideas from the navy-yard, the museum, 
the aquarial gardens, the picture-galleries ; or it will 
take your civic little ones into the country and set 
them down in the midst of orchards and blooms 
and birds, and all the pure sweet influences of long 
summer days. It will give you four or five drives 
with your husband and children, — drives that in- 
volve fascinating white baskets ; napkins spread out 
on the grass, hungry mouths, chattering tongues, 
and oh ! such happy hearts. Or you can go to the 
beach and hear the little monkeys scream for joy 
and terror in the rushing, lapping, embracing waves, 
and see them roll over and over in the soft sand, 
and gather untold wealth of worthless shells and 
heaps of shining sand for back-yard gardens. For 
ten dollars you can buy picture-books, long-desired 
toys, flowers and flower-stands for winter, roots for 



92 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

bedding in summer, and still have enough left to 
give an extra lemon to a score of wounded soldiers 
in a hospital ward. You can buy yourself leisure to 
become acquainted with your children and to make 
them acquainted with the brightest phases of your- 
self. You can put into their lives such sunny 
memories as no after bitterness can efface ; such 
sunny memories as shall wreathe you with a glory 
in the coming years when your head is laid low in 
the grave. O my friend, I can almost see the light 
of the celestial city shining through that ten dollars, 
— and you talk about a silk cape ! 

Mind, I counsel no penuriousness, no mean re- 
trenchment for accumulation, no domestic pillage, 
no mere selfish gratification. I suggest intelligent 
and high-minded economy for the purpose of lib- 
eral expenditure. I would take in sail where only 
sensualism and ostentation blow ; but I would spread 
every rag of canvas to catch the smallest breath of 
an enlarged and Christian happiness. I would 
cease to pinch the angel, that the beast may wax 
fat. I would keep the beast under, that the angel 
may have room. 

Do you say that the picture is fanciful ? Every- 
thing is fanciful till it is put in practice. Fancy is 
often but the foreshadow of a coming fact. 

If some such course as this is not possible, if we 
must inevitably and perpetually move on in the 
same rut in which we move now, then, in a thou- 
sand and a thousand cases, life seems to me not 
worth the living. ^ 



VII. 




T is not simply that women are chained 
to a body of death. Men are equally 
victims. The world is kept back from 
its goal. One member cannot suffer 
without involving all the members in its suffering. 
Marriage, in its truest type, is love spiritual- 
izing life ; the union of the mightiest and subtlest 
forces working the noblest results. Marriage in its 
commonest manifestations is a clumsy mechanical 
contrivance. Marriage is too often mirage, — far 
off, in books, in dreams, lovely and divine ; ap- 
proached, it resolves itself into washing and iron- 
ing and cooking and nursing and house-cleaning 
and making and mending and long-suffering from 
New Year to Christmas and from Christmas on to 
New Year, to the great majority of all the women 
I know anything about. I do not mean simply 
the dull, uninteresting women, of whom there are 
really not many, but the bright and intellectual, 
capable of adorning any station, of whom there 
are more than you think, because, buried under 



94 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

household ruins, you scarcely catch a glimpse of 
what they long to be and what they might be. 
And they do not like it. Volumes may be written 
and spoken, extolling the tidy kitchens, the trim 
wives, the snowy table-cloths, and telling us how 
beautiful a woman is when doing her house- work ; 
and a few foolish women will be found to ac- 
cept it all and work the harder. Hundreds of 
years ago, when a person I know was inconceiva- 
bly young, and found great delight in hanging 
about the kitchen during the seed-time and har- 
vest of pies and preserves, to glean up the rem- 
nants of mince-meat and various mixtures left in 
the pans, a tiny relative much more acute than he 
used to practise upon his approbativeness by so- 
liloquizing to himself while both their spoons were 
clattering around the sides of the tin pan with 
frantic rapidity, " Now Peggoty is n't going away, 
and let me have the rest. Peggoty is going to 
stay and eat it all up.'' The result was that Peg- 
goty used immediately to walk off and leave his 
cormorant kinsman to the undivided booty. Just 
about as astute as the kinsman, and just about as 
silly as Peggoty, are the men who prepare and 
the women who suck the thin pap of our milk- 
and-water novels and newspapers. But the lat- 
ter are growing fewer and fewer every day. Some 
women have a natural taste for cooking. Some 
women are specially skilled' in sewing. Some wo- 
men are born with a broom in their hands, and 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 95 

some find the sick-room tlieir peculiar paradise : 
but I never saw or heard of any woman who had 
a natural fondness for being worked and worried 
from morning till night, hurrying from pillar to 
post, and conscious all the time that things were 
left in an unfinished state, from sheer want of time 
to complete them properly. Within a week, a 
woman, a model housekeeper, devoted to her 
family, — a woman who never wrote a word for 
print, nor ever addressed so much as a female meet- 
ing of any kind, a woman whose husband looks upon 
strong-mindedness as a species of leprosy, to be 
lamented rather than denounced, but at any cost 
kept from spreading, — has told me that, if it were 
not for the talk it would make, she would shut 
up her house, take her whole family, and go to 
a hotel to board from June to October, so worn 
and wearied is she with her household duties. Yet 
her family consists of only three members, and her 
husband is full of loving-kindness and considera- 
tion. Another woman, equally accomplished in all 
domestic arts and graces, and equally happy in her 
conjugal relations, once told me that she has seen 
from her window a carriage of friends coming up the 
road to her house, and has been forced to wipe away 
the tears before she could go to the door to greet 
them ; so utterly disheartened was she at the pros- 
pect of still further weight upon her already over- 
burdened shoulders. Yet she was no misanthrope, 
no nun. She loved society, and was fitted to shine 



96 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

in it ; but the inexorable, unremitting labor of her 
household was such, that it was impossible for her 
to receive from society the solace which it ought to 
give and which it has to give. So heavily pressed 
the yoke, that a party of friends was no pleasure to 
look forward to, but only more cake to be made, 
more meat to be roasted, more sheets to be washed. 
Women are accounted the weaker sex ; but 
there is no comparison to be made between the 
labor of the weaker and the stronger. Of fathers 
of families and mothers of famiUes, the real wear 
and tear of life comes on the latter. If there is 
anxiety as to a sufficiency of support, the mother 
shares it equally with the father, and feels it none 
the less for not being able to contribute directly to 
the supply of the deficiency; forced, passive en- 
durance of an evil is quite as difficult a virtue as 
unsuccessful struggle against it. If there is no 
anxiety in that direction, the occupations of men 
can scarcely give them any hint of the peculiar 
perplexing, depressing, irritating nature of a wo- 
man's ordinary household duties. Pamphleteers 
exhort women to hush up the discords, drive away 
the clouds, and have only smiles and sunshine for 
the husband coming home wearied with his day's 
labor. They would be employing themselves to 
much better advantage, if they would enjoin him 
to bring home smiles and sunshine for his wife. 
She is the one that pre-eminently needs strength 
and soothing and consolation. She needs a warm 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 97 

heart to lean on, a strong arm, and a steady hand 
to lift her out of the sloughs in which she is ready- 
to sink, and set her on the high places where birds 
sing and flowers bloom and breezes blow. The 
husband's work may be absorbing and exhaustive, 
but a fundamental difference lies in the simple fact, 
that a man has constant and certain change of 
scene, and a woman has not. A man goes out to 
his work and comes in to his meals. Two or three 
times a day, sometimes all the evening, always at 
night and on Sunday, he is away from his business 
and his place of business. The day may be long 
or short, but there is an end to it. A woman is on 
the spot all the time, and her cares never cease. 
She eats and drinks, she goes out and comes in, 
she lies down and rises up, tethered to one stone. 
It does not seem to amount to much, that a man 
closes his shop and goes home ; that he unyokes 
his oxen, ties up his cows, and sits down on the 
door-step : but let the merchant, year after year, 
eat and sleep in his counting-room, the schoolmaster 
in his school-room, the shoemaker over his lapstone, 
the blacksmith by his anvil, the minister in his 
study, the lawyer in his chambers, with only as 
frequent variations as a housekeeper's visiting and 
tea-drinkings give her, and I think he would pres- 
ently learn that he needs not to possess powers 
acute enough to divide a hair 'twixt north and 
northwest side, in order to distinguish the differ- 
ence. A distance of half a mile, or even a quarter 



98 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

of a mile, breaks off all the little cords that hare 
been compressing a man's veins, and lets the blood 
rush through them with force and freedom. It is 
change of scene, change of persons, change of at- 
mosphere, and a consequent change of a man's 
own self. He is made over new. 

But his wife moils on in the same place. Dark 
care sits behind her at breakfast and dinner and 
supper. The v^alls are festooned with her cares. 
The floors are covered with them as thick as the 
dust in the Interpreter's house. ITe shakes off the 
dust from his feet and goes home : her home is in 
the dust. What wonder that it strangles and suf- 
focates her ? 

Moreover, a man's occupation has uniformity, or 
rather unity. His path lies in one line ; sometimes 
he has only to walk mechanically along it. Rather 
stupid, but not wearing work ; for generally if he 
had been a man upon whom it would have worn 
he would have done something else : always he has 
power to bring everything to bear on his business. 
If it is mental labor, he has the opportunity of soli- 
tude, or only such association as assists. His help- 
ers, and all with whom he is concerned, are ma- 
ture, intelligent, trained, and often ambitious and 
self-respectful and courteous. He can set his ful- 
crum close to the weight, and all he has to do is to 
bear down on the lever. 

The wife's assistants, if she has any, are unspeak- 
ably in the rough, and little children make all her 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 99 

schemes " gang a-gley." The incautious slam of a 
door will shatter the best-laid plans, and the stub- 
bing of a chubby toe sinks her morning deep into 
the midday. Children are to a man amusement, 
delight, juvenescence, a truthful rendering of the 
old myth, that wicked kings were wont to derive a 
ghoul-like strength by transfusion of the blood of 
infants. The father has them for a little while. 
He frolics with them. He rejoices over them. 
They are beautiful and charming. He is new to 
them, and they are new to him, and by the time 
the novelty is over it is the hour for them to go to 
bed. He feels rested and refreshed for his contact 
with them. They present strong contrasts to the 
world he deals with all day. Their transparency 
shines sweetly against its opacity. Even their 
little wants and vanities and bickerings are to him 
only interesting developments of human nature. 
His power is pleased with their dependence ; his 
pride flatters itself with their future ; his tenderness 
softens to their clinging; his earthliness cleaves 
away before their innocence, and he thinks his 
quiver can never be too full of them. 

This is the poetry, and he reads it with great 
delight ; but there is a prose department, and that 
comes to the mother. She has had the cherubs all 
day, and she knows that the trail of the serpent is 
over them all. She sees the angel in their souls as 
•well as he, often better ; but she sees too the mark 
of the beast on their forehead, — which he seldom 



100 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

discovers. His playthings are her stumbhng-blocks. 
The constancy of her presence forbids novelty, and 
throws her upon her inventive powers for resources. 
All their weariness and fretfulness and tumbles and 
aches are poured into her lap. She has no divis- 
ion of labor, no concentration of forces ; no five 
or ten hours devoted to housework, and two or 
three to her children, taking them into her heart 
to do good like a medicine. They patter through 
every hour to stay her from doing with her might 
any of the many things which her hands find to 
do. Nothing keeps limits ; everything laps over. 
God has given her a love so inexhaustible, that, 
notwithstanding the washings and watchings, the 
sewing and dressing which children necessitate, 
notwithstanding the care, the check, the pull-back, 
the weariness, the heartsickness, which they oc- 
casion, the " little hindering things " are — my 
pen is not wont to be timid, but it shrinks from 
attempting to say what little ones are to a mother. 
But divine arrangement does not prevent human 
drawback ; and looking not at inward solace, but 
outward business, it remains true that the business 
of providing for the wants of a family is not of 
that smooth, uncreaking nature to the mother that 
it is to the father. Let a man take two or three 
little children — two or three ? Let him take 
one ! — of one, two, three, or four years of age, 
to his shop, or stall, or office, and take care of him 
all the time for a week, and he will see what I mean. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 101 

I do not say that a man's work may not be harder 
for an hour, or five or ten hours, more exhaustive 
of mental and vital power, more exclusive of all 
diversions than his wife's for the same time. It 
may or may not be ; quite as often the latter as 
the former : but I do ^ay that severe prearranged, 
intermittent labor wears less upon the temper, 
the nerves, and the spirits, that is, upon body 
and soul, than lighter, confused, unintermitting 
labor. Work that enlists the energies and the 
enthusiasm will weary, but the weariness itself is 
welcome, and brings with it a satisfaction, — the 
pleasant sense of something accomplished. The 
multiplicity of a woman's labors distracts as well 
as wearies, and each one is so petty that she has 
scarcely anything to look back on. Not one of 
them is great enough to brace and stimulate, and 
all together they form a multitudinous heap, and 
not a mountain. It is a round of endless detail ; 
little, insignificant, provoking items that she gets 
no credit for doing, but fatal discredit for leaving 
undone. Nobody notices that things are as they 
should be ; but if things are not as they should 
be, it were better for her that a millstone were 
hanged about her neck, &c. ! 

In a community, you find the husbands devoted 
to different pursuits. Baker, miller, farmer, advo- 
cate, clerk, — each one has a peculiar calling for 
which he is supposed to have a special taste, fit- 
ness, or motive, perhaps all ; but their wives have 



102 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

no room for choice. Whether they have a gift of 
it or not, they have the same routine of baking and 
brewing and house-cleaning. Suppose the woman 
does not hke it ? The supposition is not an impos- 
sible, not even an unnatural one. Woman's-sphere 
writers confound distinctions ; they seem to think 
that woman was not created in the garden in native 
honor clad like man, but rather, like the turtle, 
with her house on her back, and that a modem 
American house and its belongings ; so that if she 
dislikes any of the conclusions which such a house 
premises, it is as unnatural and unwomanly as if 
she should be coarse or cruel. Womanliness, in 
their vocabulary, implies fondness of and pleasure 
in domestic drudgery. Their ideal woman is en- 
amored of wash-tubs and broom-handles and fry- 
ing-pans. But modern housekeeping is no more 
woman's sphere than farming is man's sphere, nor 
so much. If you go back far enough, you will 
find that man was directly and divinely ordained 
to that very pursuit. The Lord God took the 
man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to 
dress it and to keep it. His sphere was expressly 
marked out. He was to be a gardener, a farmer, 
a tiller of the soil. What of the woman ? " The 
Lord God said. It is not good that the man should 
be alone : I will make him an help meet for him." 
What kind of help was meant is here implied, but 
is more clearly discovered further on by Adam's 
own interpretation : " The woman whom thou 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 103 

gavest to be with w.^." She was made for society, 
to be company for him ; to talk and laugh and 
cheer and keep him from being lonesome. Not a 
word about housekeeping. Adam is concerned 
to put the very best face on the matter, and he 
does not say, " the woman whom thou gavest to 
train up the vines, to pare the apples, to stone the 
raisins, to gather the currants, to press the grapes, 
to preserve the peaches," or for any other pur- 
poses of an Eden household. It is simply " thou 
gavest to be with m^." Whatever may have come 
in afterwards to modify the original arrangement, 
came for " the hardness of your hearts." But 
here, before the fall, is seen, in all its beauty and 
simplicity, the original plan. You have the whole 
"woman question" in a nutshell. Yet people 
who are fond of quoting the Bible manage to skip 
this. They go back to the curse, " thy desire 
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over 
thee," and there they stop. Their nature is nature 
accursed, and even that is silent on the point of 
menial service : they do not go back to nature in- 
nocent, where it is excluded by implication. Bat 
if the Bible is proof on one side, it is proof on the 
other. If the husband is made to be the head of 
the woman, he is also made to be her serving- 
man. Nay, even the silence of the curse is more 
golden than the speech of man, for the same allot- 
ment of penalty which lays upon her the sorrow 
of conception lays upon him the sorrow of toil : 



104 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

so that every man whose wife is obhged to eat 
bread in the sweat of her brow is out of his sphere, 
and has failed of his "mission." He lays upon 
the shoulders of a weak woman his own burden as 
well as hers. And every man who is not a farmer 
is out of his sphere, and should put himself into it 
before he casts a single stone at any woman ; and 
he is as much more guilty as his sphere is more 
accurately defined. 

So much for the revelation of the word ; now 
for the revelation of nature. 

Naturally, I suppose women's tastes are not any 
more likely to be uniform than men's tastes. The 
narrow range of their lives has undoubtedly tended 
to keep them down towards one standard, but every 
new-born child is a new protest of nature, — a new 
outburst of individuality against monotony, so that 
the work is really never done, and never comes 
anywhere near being so far done as that all women, 
or the majority of women, should choose the life 
of a housekeeper. As far as my observation goes, 
the best women, the brightest w^omen, the noblest 
w^omen, are the very ones to w^hom it is most irk- 
some. I do not mean housekeeping with well- 
trained servants, for that is general enough to 
admit a " brother near the throne " ; but that, 
alas ! is almost unknown in the world wherein 
J have lived ; and a w^oman who is satisfied with 
the small cares, the small economies, the small 
interests, the constant contemplation of small 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 105 

things which many a household demands, is a 
very small sort of woman. I make the assertion 
both as an inference and an observation. A noble 
discontent — not a peevish complaining, but an 
inward and spiritual protest — is a woman's safe- 
guard against the deterioration which such a life 
threatens, and her proof of capacity and her note 
of preparation for a higher. Such a woman does 
not do her work less well, but she rises ever supe- 
rior to her work. I know such women. 

You talk about the mother-instinct. The moth- 
er-instinct makes a mother love her children, but 
it does not make her love to destroy herself with 
unremitting toil for them. It makes her do it, 
but it does not make her love to do it. And be- 
cause, in her great love, she will do it when the 
necessity is laid upon her, — a wicked perversion 
of God's good gift often lays the necessity upon 
her when God does not. The mother-instinct in 
woman corresponds to the father-instinct in man ; 
and the wifely love to the husbandly love. Each 
is strong enough to bear joyfully all that God lays 
upon it, and patiently much that he does not lay 
and never intended to be laid. But he who counts 
upon that strength, for the purpose of abusing it, 
is guilty of a high crime against humanity. Each 
sex has the same uniformity in its loves, and would 
undoubtedly have the same variety in its tastes 
if it were not hindered. Men do not themselves 
believe so much as they profess in this menial 

5* 



106 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

gravitation. If they did, they would never lecture 
women so much about it. The very frenzy and fre- 
quency of their exhortations are suspicious. They 
join together what God has not joined. They 
claim identity where he has est^lished diversity. 
Women are continually and publicly admonished 
of their household obligations, but who ever heard 
an assembly of men admonished of theirs ? Yet 
men are as often derelict m furnishing provision 
for their families as women are lax in its admin- 
istration. And while the husband may do his part 
in the way which seems good in his own eyes, the 
wife must do hers in only one way, whether it seem 
good or bad. The wise woman must tread " the 
old dull round of things " as well as the foohsh 
woman, and then she is so footsore that she can- 
not enter upon that higher path which is open only 
to her, and shut to the foolish woman. The low 
necessities usurp the throne of the lofty possibil- 
ities. Oh ! for this what tender consideration 
should she not receive ! Confined to the unin- 
teresting routine of domestic drudgery, while her 
tastes incline and her powers fit her for other 
things, no admiration is too deep, no sympathy 
too warm. The gentlest and most thoughtful 
attention is her smallest due. Let men fancy for 
a moment that at marriage they must give up the 
law, the pulpit, the machine-shop, the farm, in 
which they excel, and which is adequate to purse 
and pleasure, and turn hod-carrier or road-mender, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 107 

and they may have a glimpse of the sacrifice which 
many a gifted woman has made. If she made it 
unwittingly, marrying before she knew her powers, 
or the life which marriage involves, a generous 
pity and love will smooth her path as much as 
may be, and press back the unexpected thorns. 
If she made it wittingly, choosing, in her strong 
love, to lay upon the altar her pleasant things, so 
much the more will a generous man constrain her 
to forget, in the fervor and efficacy of his love, the 
fruit Avhich once her soul longed for. If he cannot 
prevent the sacrifice, he can cause that it shall not 
have been made in vain. 

Again, a man receives immediate and definite 
results from his w^ork. He has salary or wages, — 
so much a day, a year, a job. He is Lord High 
Chancellor of the Exchequer and irresponsible. 
His wife gets no money for her work. She has no 
funds under her own control, no resources of which 
she is mistress. She must draw supplies from her 
husband, and often with much outlay of ingenuity. 
Some men dole out money to their wives as if it 
were a gift, a charity, something to w^hich the lat- 
ter have no right, but which they must receive as a 
favor, and for which they must be thankful. They 
act as if their wives were trying to plunder them. 
Now a man has no more right to his earnings than 
his wife has. They belong to her just as much as 
to him. There is a mischievous popular opinion 
that the husband is the producer and the w^ife the 



108 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

consumer. In point of fact, the wife is just as much 
a producer as the husband. Her part in the con- 
cern is just as important as his. She earns it as 
truly, and has just as strong a claim and just as 
much a right to it as he ; if possible she has more, 
for she ought to receive some compensation for 
the gap that yawns between work and wages. It 
is much more satisfactory to receive the latter as 
a direct result of the former, than as a kind of 
alms. Many a woman does as much to build up 
her husband's prosperity as he does himself. 
Many a woman saves him from failure and dis- 
grace. And, as a general rule, the fate and for- 
tunes of the family lie in her hands as much as in 
his. What absurdity to pay him his wages and to 
give her money to go shopping with ! 

A woman who went around to make a collection 
for a small local charity, told me that she could not 
help noticing the difference between the married 
and the unmarried women. The latter took out 
their purses on the spot and gave their mite or 
mint without hesitation. The former parleyed and 
would see about it, gave rather uncertainly, and 
must speak to Edward before they could decide. 
Now it may well be that a woman who has only 
her own self to provide for can give more liberally 
than one upon whose purse come the innumerable 
requisitions of a family. The mother may be forced 
to make many sacrifices, and yet be so blessed in 
the making that there shall be no sacrifice. The 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 109 

pleasure shall overbalance the pain. But there 
is no reason why a married woman should hesi- 
tate, or be embarrassed, or consult Edward as to 
the expenditure of a dime or a dollar, any more 
than an unmarried one. There may be more calls 
on the purse, but she ought to be mistress of it. 
She ought to know her husband's circumstances 
well enough to know what she can afford to give 
away, and she ought to be as free to use her judg- 
ment as he is to use his. In any unusual emer- 
gency, each will wish to consult the other; but 
he does not think of asking her as to the disposal 
of every chance quarter of a dollar, neither should 
she think of asking him. If circumstances make it 
necessary to sail close to the wind, sail close to the 
wind ; but let both be in the same boat. 

All this miserable and humiliating halting arises 
from the miserable and humiliating notion that the 
husband is the power and the wife the weight. It 
comes out, more convenient in substance, but just 
as objectionable in shape, in the wife's " allowance." 
The husband allows her so much a year for her ex- 
penses. If it means simply that so much is set 
aside for that purpose, very well; only it would 
sound rather strange to say that she allows him so 
much to carry on his business. A woman does 
not wish to be conversant with the details of her 
husband's shop any more than he wishes to under- 
stand the details of her kitchen : but he desires to 
know enough of that to be sure of prompt, suffi- 



110 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

cient, and agreeable meals, and a tidy house, at a 
cost within his means. So she should know with 
sufficient accuracy the extent and sources of their 
income to be able to arrange her ordinary disburse- 
ments without constant recurrence to him. He 
does not take his dinner as a boon from her. He 
feels under no obligations for it. He does not con- 
sider himself on his good behavior out of gratitude. 
It is a regular institution, a blessing entirely com- 
mon to both, and excites no emotion. So should 
her money be, — as regularly and mechanically 
supplied gts the dinner, exciting no more comment 
and needing no more argument. Whether it is 
kept in her pocket or his may be of small moment ; 
but as she does not lock up the dinner in the cup- 
board, and then stand at the door and dole it out 
to him by the plateful, but sets it on the table for 
him to help himself: so it is better, more pacific, 
that he should deposit the money hi an equally 
neutral and accessible locality. 

I portray to myself the flutter which such a 
proposition would raise in many marital bosoms ; 
would that they might be soothed. It is well 
known among farmers that hens wdll not eat so 
much if you set a measure of corn where they 
can pick whenever they choose, as they will if you 
only fling down a handful now and then, and keep 
them continually half starved. At the same time 
they wiU be in better condition. So, looking at the 
matter from the very lowest stand-point, a woman 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, m 

who has free access to the money will not be half 
so likely to lavish it as the woman who is put off 
with scanty and infrequent sums. She who knows 
how much there is to spend will almost invariably 
keep within the limits. If she does not know, her 
imagination will be very likely to magnify the 
fountain, and if but meagre supplies are forthcom- 
ing, she will attribute it to niggardliness, and will 
consider everything that can be got from her hus- 
band as legal plunder ; and with under-ground 
pipes and above-ground trenches it shall go hard 
but she will drain him tolerably dry. Then he 
will inveigh against her extravagance, and so not 
only lose his money, but his temper, his calmness, 
and -his complacency, all the while blaming her 
when the fault is chiefly his own. If he had but 
frankly acquainted her with the main facts ; if he 
had but permitted her to look in and see what 
was the capacity of the reservoir, instead of leav- 
ing her to sit under the walls, knowing nothing 
of its resources but what she could learn from 
the occasional spouting of a single small pipe, he 
would have avoided all the trouble. It is so rarely 
that a wife will recklessly transcend her reasona- 
ble income, that I dp not think it worth while to 
suggest any provision against the evil. It is an 
abnormal and sporadic case, to be treated physio- 
logically rather than philosophically. The man 
has unfortunately allied himself to a mad woman, 
or he has found to his regret that there is nothing 
more fulsome than a she-fool. 



112 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

It irks me to say these things. It is almost a 
profanation to connect such cold-blooded business 
matters with a relation which is supposed to involve, 
and which should involve, the highest, the purest, 
the fairest traits of human life. In true marriage 
there is indeed no need of these considerations. A 
complete and perfect marriage breaks down all 
barriers, and fuses each separate interest into one. 
In such there is no mine and thine, but unity and 
identity. For perfect marriages I do not write ; 
but for the imperfect, and the marriages not yet 
contracted. Let us have another standard set 
up, another starting-point established, another goal 
fixed, that we may run without weariness, and w^alk 
without faintness, and be crowned at last with a lau- 
rel worth the wearing. A ten years' wife once said 
to a young lady who was spendirfg money rather 
freely, — money which w^as, however, her own, for 
which she had to depend upon no one, — "You 
ought to lay up something for yourself. You 
should have a little money — if only five hundred 
dollars, it will be better than nothing — in the 
bank, so that w^hen you are married you w^ill have 
something of your own to go to, and not have to 
depend entirely upon your In^band. You will be 
a great deal happier to have something that you 
can do what you choose with, and not feel that 
you must account for every cent, and make it go 
as far as possible." But it seems to me that this is 
felo de se. Doubtless, people often find that they 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 113 

have married the wrong person ; but it is supposed 
to be a mistake, and not a walking into the ditch 
with eyes open. If a girl knows, or even suspects, 
or entertains the possibiUty beforehand, that she is 
going to marry a man from whom it is necessary 
to provide for herself a pecuniary refuge, why does 
she marry him at all ? If she deliberately unites 
herself to one who she believes, or even fears, will 
not receive her as a trust from God, bone of his 
bone and flesh of his flesh, she forfeits all sym- 
pathy and pity, whatever may befall her. If the 
husband whom she is to take threatens to be greedy, 
or unsympathizing, or selfish, or stolid, her best de- 
fence against him is, not to put money in a bank, 
but to keep herself out of his reach. It is impos- 
sible to conceive of happiness in marriage, where 
the financial wheels do not run — I will not say 
smoothly, but evenly. The road may be rough, 
roundabout, and steep, without precluding whole- 
some and hearty happiness ; but if one wheel drags 
while the other turns, if one goes back while the 
other goes forward, if for any reason the two do 
not move by parallel lines in the same direction, 
the whole carriage is bewitched, the whole jour- 
ney is embittered, the whole object is baffled. 

It is marvellous to see the insensibility with 
w^hich men manage these delicate matters. It is 
impossible for a man to be too scrupulous, too 
chivalrous, too refined, in his bearing towards his 
wife. Her dependence should be the strongest 



11 4: A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

appeal to his manhood. The very act of receiving 
money from him puts her in a position so equivo- 
cal, that the utmost affection and attention should 
be brought into play to reassure her. The vel- 
vet touch of love should disguise the iron hand 
of business. A sensitive woman is fully enough 
alive to her relations. There is need that every 
gentle and tender courtesy should assure and con- 
vince her that the money which she costs is a 
pleasure and a privilege. Her dehcacy, her self- 
respect, her confidence in his appreciation, are the 
strongest ties that can bind her to himself. Let 
them but be sundered, and he has no longer any 
hold on happiness, any safeguard against discord. 
Let chivalry be forgotten, let sensitiveness be vio- 
lated, let money intrude into the domain of love, 
and the spell is broken. Your stately silver urn 
is become an iron kettle. 

Yet men will deliberately, i:i the presence of 
their wives, to their wives, groan over the cost of 
living. They do not mean extravagant purchases 
of silk and lace and velvet, which might be a 
wife's fault or thoughtlessness, and furnish an ex- 
cuse for rebuke ; but the butcher's bill, and the 
grocer's bill, and the joiner's bill. Man, when a 
woman is married, do you think she loses all per- 
sonal feeling ? Do you think your glum look over 
the expenses of housekeeping is a fulfilment of 
your promise to love and cherish ? Is it calcu- 
lated to retain and increase her tenderness for you ? 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 115 

Does it bring sunshine and lighten toil, and bless 
her with knightly grace ? Do you not know that 
it is only a way of regretting that you married her ? 
It is a way of saying that you did not count the cost. 
You may not present it to yourself in that light, 
but in that light you present it to her. And do 
you think it is a pleasant thing to her ? You go 
out to your shop, or sit down to your newspaper, 
and forget all about it. She sits down to her 
sewing, or stands over her cooking-stove, and 
meditates upon it with an indescribable pain. I 
do not say that every kind of uneasiness regarding 
expense is or ought to be thus construed. There 
may be an uneasiness springing directly from love. 
A strong and great-hearted affection frets that it 
cannot minister the beauty and the comfort which 
it longs to do, or defend against the emergen- 
cies which a future may bring. But this uneasi- 
ness is rarely if ever mistaken. Love can usually 
find a way to soothe the sorrows of love, and a 
wife's hand can almost always smooth out the 
wrinkles from the brow which is corrugated only 
for her.' The complaint which I mean is of quite 
another character. Women know it, if men do 
not ; — the women who have suffered from it, for 
it is pleasant to think that there are women to 
whose experience every such sensation is entirely 
foreign. -These very men who complain because 
it costs so much to live will lose by bad debts 
more than their wives spend. They will, by 



116 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

sheer negligence, by a selfish reluctance to pre- 
sent a bill to a disagreeable person, by a cowardly 
fear lest insisting on what is due should alienate 
a customer, by culpable mismanagement of busi- 
ness, by indorsing a note, or lending money, 
through mere want of courage to say " No," or 
of shrewdness to detect dishonesty or incapa- 
city, lose money enough to foot up half a dozen 
bills. They will waste money in cigars, in oys- 
ter-suppers, in riding when walking would be 
better for them, in keeping a horse which " eats 
his head off," in buying luxuries which they would 
be better off without, in sending packages and 
luggage by express, rather than have the trouble 
of taking them themselves, in numberless small 
items of which they make no account, but of which 
the bills make great account. If one might judge 
from the newspapers, extravagance is a peculiarity 
of women. So far as my observation goes, the 
extravagance of women is not for a moment to be 
compared with the extravagance of men.* A man 
is perversely, persistently, and with malice afore- 
thought, extravagant. He is extravagant in spite 
of admonition and remonstrance. Where his per- 
sonal comfort or interest is concerned, he scorns a 

* The discussions which, since this was written, have arisen 
concerning expenditure and extravagance, in connection with 
the women's pledge against the purchase of foreign goods, only 
increase the strength of my position. But let it be remembered, 
that I speak not for an emergency, but for the conduct of life. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 117 

sacrifice. He laughs at the suggestion that such 
a Httle thing makes any difference one way or 
another. He has not even the idea of economy. 
He does not know what the word means. He 
does not know the thing when he sees it. Women 
take to it naturally. A certain innate sense of 
harmony keeps them from being wasteful. Their 
extravagance is the exception, not the rule. They 
are willing to incur self-denial. They do not 
scorn to take thought and trouble, and be put to 
inconvenience, for the sake of saving money. The 
greater animalism of man also comes out here in 
full force. If sacrifice must be, a woman will 
sacrifice her comforts before her taste. The man 
will let his tastes go, and keep his comforts, and 
call it good sense. A woman's extravagance is to 
some purpose. A man's to none. She buys many 
dresses, but she gives her old ones away, or cuts 
them over for the children, and works dextrously. 
A man buys and destroys. Look at the manner 
in which men manage the national housekeeping, 
and see whether it is men or women who are ex- 
travagant. Look at the clerkships in the depart- 
ments, look at members of Congress browsing 
among government supplies, look at army and 
navy ; walk through a camp : see the barrels of 
good food thrown away, see the wood wasted, see 
the tools wantonly destroyed. I think the wives 
of the soldiers could support themselves comfort- 
ably on the fragments of the soldiers' feasts. No- 



118 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

body complains. A great nation must not look 
too closely after the pennies. A great army al- 
ways makes great waste, say the newspapers that 
exhort women agrainst extrava^-ance, as if it were 
as much a law of nature as gravitation. Why not 
say housekeeping is always wasteful, and fall back 
on that as a primal law of nature also ? Because 
housekeeping is not always wasteful, you say. 
Precisely. Housekeeping is nearly always econ- 
omically conducted, and your animadversions 
amount just to this : because women are generally 
prudent, they are to be chided for all short- 
comings. But men are always wasteful, there- 
fore they must be let alone. Only be univer- 
sally bad, and you shall be as unmolested as if 
you were good. You say that it is easier to be 
economical in a family than in an army. Perhaps 
so ; but if the soldiers, instead of being men, were 
women, do you for a moment imagine that there 
would be any such waste ? Let all other circum- 
stances be unchanged. Let all the cost come upon 
the government just as it does. Let all provisions 
be furnished in the same abundance as now, and 
I do not believe there would be much more waste 
than there is in average families. I do not believe 
you could force women at the point of the bayonet 
to such reckless prodigality as men indulge in. 
It is against their nature. It hurts them. It 
violates God's law, written in their hearts. They 
would also be too conscientious to do it. They 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 119 

would not consider the fact that " Uncle Sam 
foots the bills " a reason why a saw should be 
tossed aside on the first symptom of dulness, and 
a new one bought. They would not throw away 
a half loaf because there were plenty of whole 
ones, but keep it and steam it. And not only 
would there be a great deal less waste, but there 
would be a great deal better supply. If women 
had charge of the commissariat, I do not believe 
there would have been one half so much friction 
as there has been. Hungry regiments would not 
get to the end of a long march and find nothing to 
eat. Sick soldiers would not be expected to recover 
health from salt pork and muddy coffee. Experi- 
ence or no experience, red tape or no tape, women 
would have managed to bring hungry mouths and 
hot soups together, and to furnish delicate food for 
delicate health. They would not only have sup- 
plied the soldiers at less cost to government, but 
the less cost would have produced a larger bill of 
fare. How did the English army fare till Florence 
Nightingale came by and knocked their granary 
doors open ? That my remarks are not mere 
theory, or rather that my theory is founded on 
truth, is abundantly proved by a statement printed 
in the North American Review for January, 1864, 
long after my words were written. It is from an 
article on the Sanitary Commission. 

" At this moment, the only region in the loyal 
States that is definitely out of the circle is Mis- 



120 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

souri. The rest of our loyal territory is all em- 
braced within one ring of method and federality. 
This is chiefly due to the wonderful spirit of 
nationality that beats in the breasts of American 
women. They, even more than the men of the 
country, from their utter withdrawal from partisan 
strifes and local politics, have felt the assault upon 
the life of the nation in its true national im- 
port. They are infinitely less State-ish^ and more 
national in their pride and in their sympathies. 
They see the war in its broad, impersonal out- 
lines ; and while their particular and special affec- 
tions are keener than men's, their general humanity 
and tender sensibility for unseen and distant suffer- 
ings is stronger and more constant. 

" The women of the country, who are the actual 
creators, by the labor of their fingers, of the chief 
supplies and comforts needed by the soldiers, have 
been the first to understand, appreciate, and co- 
operate with the Sanitary Commission. It is due 
to the sagacity and zeal with w^hich they have 
entered into the work, that the system of sup- 
plies, organized by the extraordinary genius of 
Mr. Olmstead, has become so broadly and nation- 
ally extended, and that, with Milwaukee, Chicago, 
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburg, Phila- 
delphia, New York, Brooklyn, New Haven, Hart- 
ford, Providence, Boston, Portland, and Concord 
for centres, there should be at least fifteen thou- 
sand Soldiers' Aid Societies, all under the control 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 121 

of women, combined and united in a common 
work, — of supplying, through the United States 
Sanitary Commission, the wants of the sick and 
wounded in the great Federal army. 

" The skill, zeal, business qualities, and patient 
and persistent devotion exhibited hy those women 
wdio manage the truly vast operations of the several 
chief centres of supply, at Chicago, Boston, Cleve- 
land, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and New York, have 
unfolded a new page in the history of the aptitudes 
and capacities of women. To receive, acknowl- 
edge, sort, arrange, mark, repack, store, hold ready 
for shipment, procure transportation for, and send 
forward at sudden call, the many thousand boxes 
of hospital stores which, at the order of the Gen- 
eral Secretary at Washington, have been for the 
past two years and a half forwarded at various 
times by the ' Women's Central ' at New York, 
the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, at 
Cleveland, the Branches at Cincinnati and at 
Philadelphia, or the Northwestern Branch at 
Chicago, has required business talents of the high- 
est order. A correspondence demanding infinite 
tact, promptness, * and method has been carried 
on with their local tributaries, by the women from 
these centres, with a ceaseless ardor, to which the 
Commission owes a very large share of its success, 
and the nation no small part of the sustained 
usefulness and generous alacrity of its own patri- 
otic impulses. 

6 



122 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

" To collect funds (for the supply branches hare 
usually raised their own funds from the immediate 
communities in which they have been situated) 
has often tasked their ingenuity to the utmost. 
In Chicago, for instance, the Branch has lately 
held a fair of,colossal proportions, to which the 
whole Northwest was invited to send supplies, and 
to come in mass ! On the 26th of October last, 
when it opened, a procession of three miles in 
length, composed of wagon-loads of supplies, and 
of people in various ways interested, paraded 
through the streets of Chicago ; the stores being 
closed, and the day given up to patriotic sympa- 
thies. For fourteen days the fair lasted, and every 
day brought reinforcements of supplies, and of 
people and purchasers. The country people, from 
hundreds of miles about, sent in upon the railroads 
all the various products of their farms, mills, and 
hands. Those who had nothing else sent the 
poultry from their barnyards ; the ox, or bull, or 
calf, from the stall ; the title-deed of a few acres 
of land ; so many bushels of grain, or potatoes, or 
onions. Loads of hay, even, were sent in from 
ten or a dozen miles out, and sold at once in the 
hay-market. On the roads entering the city were 
seen rickety and lumbering wagons, made of 
poles, loaded with mixed freight, — a few cabbar 
ges, a bundle of socks, a coop of tame ducks, a 
few barrels of turnips, a pot of butter, and a bag 
of beans, — with the proud and humane farmer 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 123 

driving the team, his wife behind in charge of 
the baby, while two or three Httle children con- 
tended with the boxes and barrels and bundles 
for room to sit or lie. Such were the evidences 
of devotion and self-sacrificing zeal the North- 
western farmers gave, as in their long trains of 
wagons they trundled into Chicago, from twenty 
and thirty miles' distance, and unloaded their con- 
tents at the doors of the Northwestern Fairs, for 
the benefit of the United States Sanitary Com- 
mission. The mechanics and artisans of the towns 
and cities were not behind the farmers. Each 
manufacturer sent his best piano, plough, thresh- 
ing-machine, or sewing-machine. Every form of 
agricultural implement, and every product of me- 
chanical skill, was represented. From the watch- 
maker's jewelry to horseshoes and harness; from 
lace, cloth, cotton and linen, to iron and steel ; 
from wooden and waxen and earthen w^are, to 
butter and cheese, bacon and beef; — nothing 
came amiss, and nothing failed to come, and the 
ordering of all this was in the hands of women. 
They fed in the restaurant, under ' the Fair,' at fifty 
cents a meal — fifteen hundred mouths a dav, fora 
fortnight — from food furnished, cooked, and served 
by the women of Chicago ; and so orderly and 
convenient, so practical and wise were the arrange- 
ments, that, day by day, they had just what they 
had ordered and what they counted on, — always 
enough, and never too much. They divided the 



124 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

houses of the town, and levied on No. 16 A Street, 
for five turkeys, on Monday; No. 37 B Street, for 
twelve apple-pies, on Tuesday ; No. 49 C Street, for 
forty pounds of roast beef, on Wednesday ; No. 
23 D Street was to furnish so much pepper on 
Thursday ; No. 33 E Street, so much salt on Fri- 
day. In short, every preparation was made in 
advance, at the least inconvenience possible to 
the people, to distribute in the most equal manner 
the welcome burden of feeding the visitors at the 
fair, at the expense of the good people of Chicago, 
but for the pecuniary benefit of the Sanitary Com- 
mission. Hundreds of lovely young girls, in sim- 
ple uniforms, took their places as waiters behind 
the vast array of tables, and everybody was as well 
served as at a first-class hotel, at a less expense 
to himself, and with a great profit to the fair. 
Fifty thousand dollars, it is said, will be the least 
net return of this gigantic fair to the treasury of 
the Branch at Chicago. It is universally conceded 
that to Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge, old and 
tried friends of the soldier and of the Sanitary 
Commission, and its ever active agents, are due 
the planning, management, and vsuccess of this 
truly American exploit. What is the value of 
the money thus raised, important as it is, when 
compared with the worth of the spirit manifested, 
the loyalty exhibited, the patriotism stimulated, 
the example set, the prodigious tide of national 
devotion put in motion ! How can rebellion hope 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 125 

to succeed in the face of such demonstrations as 
the Northwestern Fair ? They are bloodless bat- 
tles, equal in significance and results to Vicksburg 
and Gettysburg, to New Orleans and Newbern." 
Men, have you read this paragraph ? Please to 
read it again ! Think of all your inveighing against 
female extravagance and incapacity, and read it yet 
again. Put on sackcloth and ashes, and read it 
aloud to your wife, to your mother, to your daugh- 
ter, to your sister, to your grandmother, to your 
aunt, to your niece, to your mother-in-law, and 
all your relatives-in-law, and to every woman who 
suffers your presence, and then lay your hand on 
your mouth, and your mouth in the dust, and cry, 
'' Woe is me ! for I am undone." Inexperience ? 
Had Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore any more ex- 
perience in feeding fifteen hundred mouths a day 
than the quartermaster of a regiment ? Have the 
women of Chicago generally devoted their lives to 
trafficking in tame ducks, loads oF hay, threshing- 
machines, and beef and bacon? Yet you have 
the very -essence of business tact in '' nothing 
came amiss, and nothing failed to come " ; and the 
very essence of economy in " always enough, and 
never too much" ; and the crowning glory — write 
it on the posts of thy house, and on thy gates ; 
teach it diligently unto thy children, and talk of it 
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou 
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, 
and when thou risest up ; bind it for a sign upon 



126 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

thine hand, and let it be as a frontlet between 
thine eyes — " the ordering of all this was in the 
hands of women." 

This ascription of female extravagance, whether 
made publicly in newspapers or privately in family 
conclave, is not only false and fatal, but it is fatal 
in the very innermost and vital points of life. 
What is destroyed is not an adventitious thing, 
but the spring of all satisfaction. The relations 
between a man and his wife decide the weal of his 
life. The whole chain of his circumstances can be 
no stronger than the link between him and her. 
He may be ever so rich or renowned, but he can 
bear no heavier weight of happiness than that link 
can sustain. The newspaper paragraphs do the 
harm of confirming individual men in their notions 
that it is the wife who incurs the unnecessary ex- 
pense, and so divert their attention from their own 
duties, and urge them on in their evil courses to 
their own undoing. But a man is just as powerful 
for good as he is for evil. By as much as he can 
alienate his wife from himself by his petty finan- 
ciering, by so much can he draw her to his heart 
by a gentle chivalry. Invested by the law with 
power, he has only to transmute it into love to 
secure a loyalty capable of any sacrifice. Let a 
wife read in her husband's face and bearing how 
grateful is her society, how precious her life, how 
sweetest of all pleasures to him is the knowledge 
of her pleasure ; let her feel that she is to him 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 127 

something different from all earthly mtereSts, — 
something above and beyond all other joys ; let 
her see that, with her coming, money ceased to be 
mere current coin, that labor acquired a new dig- 
nity^ and prudence a new charm, because they^ all 
might minister to her convenience or delight ; let 
her see that she adjusts, harmonizes, and completes 
his Hfe ; that she is the central sun, about which 
all minor interests and plans revolve ; and — what 
have you gained ? A good housekeeper ? A 
well-ordered household? More than this. An 
empire. Supreme dominion. You Imve only to 
be tender and true, and nothing can sweep away 
the golden mist through which, whatever you 
may be to others, you shall appear to her eyes 
a knight without fear and without reproach. 

Wrong opinions concerning the relations be- 
tween husband and wife are also occasionally ex- 
pressed in another and opposite manner. A wife 
comes into the possession of property. The hus- 
band, determined not to encroach upon her rights, 
leaves the disposal of the property to her. He 
insists that it shall be invested in her name. He 
will take no responsibility as to the mode of invest- 
ment. This may be done from honorable motives. 
The man means to be just and blameless ; and if 
he is conscious of innate weakness or wickedness, 
or if the marriage be an ill-assorted one, he may 
be pursuing the best course. There may also be 
outside, merely business reasons which make it the 



128 A NEW ATMOSPHERE., 

best course. But to do it simply from a notion of 
justice, is as far as possible from what ought to be. 
The man shows himself entirely at fault regarding 
the range of justice. If life were what it should 
be, the law would be right in recognizing for the 
woman no existence separate from her husband. 
Love is but the fulfilling of that law. The reason 
why such a law is unjust is, that life is so constant 
a violation of the higher spiritual law, that this 
lower one which embodies it works mischief. It 
fits the righteous theory only, not the wicked facts. 
But law is for the evil, not for the good. There 
is no enactment that a man shall possess his own 
property. The enactments are to punish those 
who attempt to wrest his property from him. 
There need be no enactment that a man shall be 
master of his wife's possessions ; he has but to. be 
to her a true husband, and all that she has is his. 
The law should punish him for neglect of duty and 
disregard of claims, by a forfeiture of property. 
If the law this day completely reversed the posi- 
tion of husband and wife, it would make no jot or 
tittle of change in their actual position, where they 
love each other as they ought. Women naturally 
have a distaste to business, and an indifference to 
money. Of their own motion, they would leave 
such things in the hands of men, if the instinct of 
self-preservation did not force them to interference. 
In addition to this generic negative willingness, the 
happy wife has a positive delight in enriching with 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 129 

every blessing the man she loves. When Aurora 
gave her love with all lavishment, and prayed 
Eomney, 

" If now you 'd stoop so low to take my love. 
And use it roughly, without stint or spare, 
As men use common things with more behind, 
To any mean and ordinary end, — 
The joy would set me like a star, in heaven, 
So high up, I should shine because of height 
And not of virtue/' — 

did she make a mental reservation to herself of the 
money which her books had brought her ? 

What the law should do, is to step in and guard 
woman against the possible disastrous consequen- 
ces which may spring from the spontaneous self- 
abnegation of love. What it should not do, is to 
guarantee to the miser, the spendthrift, the tyrant, 
debauchee, or vampire, the things which a man 
would possess of his own inalienable right. What 
a husband should do, is to show himself great 
enough and good enough to know and feel that, in 
love, giving and receiving wear the selfsame grace. 
What he should not do, is to talk of justice when 
they twain should be one flesh. 




6^ 



VIII. 




OMAN'S rank in life depends entirely 
on what life is. Her importance is 
decided wlien it is decided what ser- 
vice is important. If money is the 
one thing needful, and its acquisition the chief end 
of man, the wife's position is very inferior to her 
husband's. The greater part of the money is 
earned in his, and often spent in her department. 
He does the, work that is paid for, and he belongs 
to the sex that is paid. She does the work that is 
not paid for, and she belongs to the sex that is 
pillaged. Men go out and gain money : wives stay 
at home and spend it. The case is against them 
— if that is the whole case. But if money is only 
means to an end ; if happiness, intelligence, integ- 
rity, are more worth than gold ; if a life ruled by 
the law of God, if the development of the divine 
in the human, if the education of every faculty, 
and the enjoyment of every power, be more love- 
ly and more desirable than bank stock, then the 
woman walks not one whit behind the man, but 



A -NEW ATMOSPHERE. 131 

side by side, with no unequal steps. He furnishes' 
and she fashions the material from which grace 
and strength are wrought. Her work is in point 
of fact incomparably fairer, finer, more difficult, 
more important than his. It is not money-getting 
alone, or chiefly, but money-spending, that influ- 
ences and indicates character. A man may work 
up to his knees in swamp-meadows, or breathe all 
day the foul air of a court-room ; but if, when re- 
leased, he turns naturally to sunshine and apple- 
orchards and womanly grace, swamp-mud and vile 
air have not polluted him. He is a clean-souled 
man through it all. But if a man find rest from 
his work in mere eating and drinking, if the money 
which he has earned goes to gross amusements 
and coarse companions, he shows at once the low- 
ness of his character, however high may be his 
occupation. 

Those hands which have the ordering of house 
and home, have a large share in the ordering of 
character. The man who provides the house does 
an important part, but she who refines it into a 
home is the true artist. To whom is the palm 
awarded, to the painter who, from ochre and lead, 
lays on the rough canvas the lovely landscape, 
touched with a beauty borrowed from his own soul, 
or the huckster who sells him ochre, lead, and 
canvas, or even the successful shoddy-contractor 
who pays five thousand of his Judas Iscariot dol- 
lars, that he may hang it in a bad light in his din- 



132 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

ing-room till such day as he shall have the grace to 
go and hang hhnself ? It has been said that in the 
highest departments women have never produced 
a masterpiece. Painting has its old masters, but 
no old mistresses. Jenny Lind may entrance the 
world from her '' heaven-kissing hill," but on the 
mountain-tops Mendelssohn and Beethoven stand 
uncompanioned. Sappho plumed her wings, but 
plunged quickly from the Leucadian cliff, and Mil- 
ton soars steadfastly to the sun alone. We shall 
see about this one day, but meanwhile life itself 
is higher than any of the arts of life, and in living 
no man has risen to loftier heights than a w^oman, 
and the mass of men are infinitely lower than the 
mass of women, and would be lower still if it were 
not for female assistance. With all the help w^hich 
they receive from women, they are perpetually 
lapsing into brutality, and whenever they go off 
into a community by themselves, they go headlong 
downwards, following their natural gravitation. 

It is women that make men fit to live. They 
often confess it themselves without meaning any- 
thing by it. I take advantage of the confession ; 
as the malignant Minister in Titan " retained the 
habit, w^hen an open-hearted soul showed him its 
breaches, of marching in upon it through those 
breaches, as if he himself had made them." In 
toasts and festive speeches none can be more bland 
than they. With sweet and smiling, arch and 
gracious humility, they dwell upon the refining 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 133 

and elevating influence of " lovely w'^oman," as if 
it were a pretty thing to be growling and snappish 
and stroked into quiescence and acquiescence by a 
soft hand, — as if a midsummer-night's dream were 
a midwinter-day's truth, and man were content to 
be Bottom the weaver, with his ass's head stuck 
full with musk-roses by fairy Titanias. But I say 
it not as a man gallantly towards women, nor as a 
woman angrily towards men, but as a simple state- 
ment of fact by an unconcerned spectator, and far 
more in sorrow than in anger. What is proffered 
as compliment I accept and reproduce as truth, 
and if men will not stand convicted of false dealing, 
let them show their faith by their works, and yield 
themselves, plastic and unresisting, to the hands 
that will mould them to fairest shapes. 

Over against this mistaken notion stands its 
opponent notion, equally mistaken, more exten- 
sive, circulated by men, adopted by women, and 
doing its mischievous work silently and surely. 
Public opinion, floatmg about in novels and peri- 
odicals, lays upon the shoulders of women burdens 
which they are not able to bear, which they were 
never intended to bear, and which ought never to 
be laid upon them. Before marriage, society agrees 
to make men grasp the laboring oar. They must 
choose and woo and win ; while the woman's 
strength is to sit still. But after marriage the 
scene suddenly shifts. The wife must take the 
wooing and winning into her hands. She must 



134 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

make home pleasant. She must rear the children. 
She must manage society. She must incur the 
responsibility of the welfare and happiness of the 
family. The husband is on the one side a wild 
animal who must be managed but not controlled ; 
on the other, a piece of rare china, which must 
be carefully handled and kept from all rough con- 
tact. 

''It is the wife who makes the home, and the 
home makes the man," says the country news- 
paper, in its domestic column. 

" If a wife would make the husband delighted 
with home, she must first make home delightful. 
She must first woo him there by all the arts of 
afiection, — by cheerfulness, tidiness, orderliness 
without excess : by a clean-swept hearth, a bright 
fire, flowers upon the mantel, a well-set table and 
well-cooked food. She must be careful of impos- 
ing restraints upon his tastes, inclinations, move- 
ments, and render him free of every suspicion of 
domestic imprisonment. If his masculine tastes, 
as they will, draw him from home at times, to the 
club, to the lodge, or the political meeting, or 
elsewhere, let her second them with that ready 
cheerfulness which will prove one of the strong 
cords to draw him back to home as the centre of 
his earthly joys," says its virtuous neighbor. 

" I have heard women speak of their rights. If 
they had made the men of the world what God 
intended they should make of them, there would 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 135 

have been no need of this complaining," says the 
orthodox heroine in the orthodox novel. 

" What makes a man feel at home in the house ? 

Is it to leave him absolute master of his 

rightful position, the large liberty to go and come, 
trusting for her part religiously in the virtue and 
the sovereign power of her love, — knowing, as if 
she had read it out of Holy Writ, for her own heart 
has told her " (her being the heroine aforemen- 
tioned, now become the hero's wife) " that, if she 
shall ever cease to hold the love and trust w^hich 
she has won, the fault, as the loss, is hers ? " 

" She " (she being the aforesaid orthodox heroine 
and orthodox submissive wife, now become the 
orthodox devoted mother), — " She had the con- 
sciousness that it was hers to make of this child 
what she Vv^ould ! " 

I have spoken before of the comparative work 
of the husband and wife, considered merely as 
labor. I refer now to the comparative moral 
weight belonging to their respective positions. 

All masculine and all orthodox feminine trac- 
tates on female education, all male lectures on 
female duties, all anniversary orators to female 
schools, ring the changes on the importance of 
educating girls to be good wives and mothers, 
with the persistency of the old song which shut- 
tled back and forth some twenty times or more 
to tell us that '' John Brown had a little Indian." 
But were the graduating class of a college ever 



136 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

exhorted to be good husbands and fathers ? Are 
fathers ever admonished to teach their sons do- 
mestic virtues, to make them fond and faithful 
and good providers for the wives they may one 
day possess? But I should like to know if girls 
have any stronger tendency to become wives and 
mothers, than the boys have to become husbands 
and fathers ? Are they any more likely to be bad 
wives and mothers, than boys are to be bad hus- 
bands and fathers ? Is the number of incompetent 
wives obviously greater than the number of incom- 
petent husbands ? Is the number of injudicious 
mothers obviously greater than the number of 
injudicious fathers ? And where the wife and 
mother is incompetent and injudicious, does it 
generally seem to be owing to too great strength 
of mind and culture of intellect, and too little do- 
mestic education, or is it owing to weakness of 
character ? It is not a remote, but it seems to be 
an entirely unobserved truth, that for every wife 
there is a husband, and for every mother there is 
a father ; and so far as my observation extends, 
domestic mismanagement and unhappiness, in ah 
overwhelming majority of cases, are owing to the 
shortcomings of the husband, and not of the wife, 
or to the wife in an inferior and resultant measure. 
'' There is blame on both sides," say the observers, 
oracularly, and this most superficial of all super- 
ficial generalizations is supposed to be an impartial 
and exhaustive summary. It is just as much a 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 137 

summary as the statement that two and two make 
four. Two and two do make four, but it is nothing 
to the purpose here. To say that there is blame 
on both sides, is simply saying that neither a man 
nor a woman is perfect, which nobody ever main- 
tained. So long as humanity is humanity, it is 
not probable that one person will be entirely sin- 
less and another entirely sinful ; but there are, 
and will continue to be, many cases in which the 
blame on one side is much more heavy and con- 
demning than the blame on the other. The man's 
blame is most often one of aggression, of the first 
provocation, of unprincipled and heartless behav- 
ior, of cruel disappointing and thwarting, of a 
giant's strength used giantly. The woman's is a 
blame of imprudence, of weakness, of disappoint- 
ment, unwisely met and impatiently or otherwise 
ill-borne ; of an inability to manage with saga- 
city, and so to master by superior moral power 
the wild beast that has clutched her, — a blame 
that is negative rather than positive, passive 
rather than active, and not to be compared with 
the other in point of heinousness. Why, then, do 
you bear down so hard on the woman's duty and 
leave the man to go his way unadmonished ? If 
you do not enforce on college-boys the duty of 
providing for their future families, why do you 
enforce on seminary-girls the duty of directing 
their future families ? If you do not educate 
young men to make good husbands, why should 



138 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

you educate J^oung women to make good wives ? 
If you do not exhort young men so to live and 
learn as to make their wives happy' and train their 
children aright, why should you exhort young 
women to study to make their husbands happy 
and train their children aright ? Because, you 
say, in the words already quoted, '' It is the wife 
that makes the home, and the home makes the 
man." It is nothing of the sort. It is the wife 
and the husband together that make the home, 
and the man was already made. The most that 
wife and home in conjunction can do is to mod- 
ify the man. If a husband be intemperate, or 
given over to money-getting, or money-saving, 
or money-spending, — if he be ill-tempered, indel- 
icate, ignorant, obstinate, arrogant, — no wife, be 
she ever so prudent, wise, affectionate, can make 
the home what it ought to be. At best she can 
only mend it. Her energies are wasted. The 
ingenuity, the love, the care, that should be ex- 
pended in making it happy are sacrificed in the 
attempt to make it as little unhappy as possible. 
With the best of husbands and the best of wives 
there are always evils enough lying in wait. 
Danger, disease, sin, are ever ready to spring upon 
the happy home, even when both the keepers 
stand guard at the portals ; how, then, can you 
expect the wife to ward off even her own part of 
these, when you lay upon her the husband's part, 
and he himself is the greatest evil of all ? 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 139 

And what right have men to depend upon home 
and wife to " make " them ? What is a man do- 
ing all the twenty or thirty years before he is mar- 
ried, that he has not made himself? And on what 
grounds does he come to her for completion ? 
How came she to be any more finished than 
he ? or any more capable of putting the finishing 
touches to another ? Are wives generally mature 
and experienced, while husbands are young and in- 
experienced ? Have wives generally more knowl- 
edge of the world, and more opportunities to be- 
come self-possessed and firmly and evenly balanced 
than husbands ? Or is the masculine material 
naturally and permanently more plastic than the 
feminine ? Let us know the pretext upon which 
a full-grown man charges a delicate woman, who 
has had little if anything to do with him until he 
became a full-grown man, with the cure of his soul ? 
If there is anything to be done in the way of edu- 
cation and reformation, one would naturally sup- 
pose that it is the stronger sex which should edu- 
cate and reform the weaker. It would seem as if 
the sex that is looked up to and sets itself up as 
sovereign should mould the sex which looks up 
and recognizes it as sovereign. Where, in the 
Bible, doe^ a man find any warrant for laying him- 
self to the account of his wife ? When God calls 
every man to judgment, will he be able to pass 
over his shortcomings to his wife ? The first man 
tried it, but with very small success. " The woman 



140 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

whom thou gavest to be with me," whimpered 
Adam; but it was a sorry refuge of hes, and did 
not avail to stay the curse from descending heavily 
upon his head. The plea that did not avail the 
first man is not likely to avail the last, nor any 
man between. "If thou art wise, thou art wise for 
thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear 
it." As a matter of fact, neither the wife makes 
the husband nor the husband the wife, but they 
both influence each other. She softens him and 
he strengthens her; or if, as not unfrequently 
happens, her nature is the stronger, she commu- 
nicates to him of its strength. In a true mar- 
riage, delicacy is imparted on the one side and 
vigor on the other, to whichever side they origi- 
nally belonged. Where the union is founded 
upon truth, there is always a tendency to equi- 
librium, woman supplying the spiritual, man the 
material element. She raises a mortal to the 
skies ; he draws an angel down. 

And no more than it belongs to the wife to 
make the home and the husband, does it belong to 
the mother to train up the children in the way 
they should go. The family is a joint-stock con- 
cern, so established both by nature and revelation. 
Where, in the Bible, do we find that the mother 
can make of her child what she will, or that God 
gave the making of the men of the world into her 
hand ? In Holy Writ, the father's duties loom up 
as largely as the mother's, and if there is any dif- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 141 

ference it is not one that discriminates in his favor 
or in favor of his release from duty. Fathers and 
mothers in the Bible receive equal honor and 
equal deference, but the instruction and guidance 
of the children are much more definitely and re- 
peatedly attributed to and inculcated upon and im- 
plied as belonging to the father than the mother. 
He is recognized as the head. At his door lies the 
responsibility. Ahaziah walked in the ways of his 
mother, but of his father also when he did evil in 
the sight of the Lord. It is the sins of the fathers, 
not of the mothers, that are visited upon the chil- 
dren. It was the fathers, not the mothers, who 
were to make known to the children the truth of 
Jehovah. It w^as the instruction of his father that 
Solomon commanded his son to hear, and the law 
of his mother w^hich he commanded him not to 
forsake, — an arrangement which modern opinions 
seem inclined to reverse. It is the fathers wdio 
are pronounced to be the glory of children, not the 
mothers ; and glory implies action. A father may 
die, and his dying prayer and his conscientious hfe, 
both commending his family to God, may descend 
upon them in ever-renewing blessing. Such is the 
promise of the Lord. A father may neglect his 
children, and the mother's care and love be so 
blessed of Heaven that they shall be burning and 
shining lights in the temple of the Most High. 
But this is God's uncovenanted mercy, and the 
father has no right to expect it. Yet one not sel- 



142 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

dom liears or sees anecdotes which imply that such 
neglect of children is not a crime, - — a crime against 
children, against mothers, against society, against 
God. In times of financial disaster I have more 
than once heard of men's consoling themselves for 
the ruin of their business by playfully declaring 
that they should now go home and get acquainted 
with their children. But the non-acquaintance 
with children, of which many fathers are guilty, is 
not a theme to be lightly spoken of. Is it a small 
thing to give life to a soul that can never die ; that, 
through unending ages, in happiness or in mis- 
ery, clothed with glory or with shame, beautiful, 
strong, upright, or disfigured and deformed, must 
hve on and on and on, forever and forever ? Is 
it a small thing to give life to a sentient being, that 
must know even the experience of this world? 
That may be bowed down with guilt, remorse, 
wretchedness, bringing other souls with it to the 
dust, or may be upborne through a pure, happy, 
and . beneficent career, bearing other souls with it 
to the skies ? How dare a man look upon these 
helpless, hapless souls, and know that to him they 
owe their being, with all its dread possibilities ; 
that upon him may fall the curse of their ruined 
lives, and — neglect them? How dare he leave 
them to another ? To no other do they belong. 
His duty he cannot delegate. After country, 
which includes all things, his first duty is to his 
family. He is a father, and at no price can he s^U 
his fatherhood. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 143 

I see notices of Female Prayer-Meetings. The 
mothers of a regiment assemble to pray for their 
sons who have gone to the war. There are Moth- 
ers' Guides and Mothers' Assistants and Mothers' 
Hymn-Books. But where are the Fathers' Hymn- 
Books ? Where are the Paternal Prayer-Meet- 
ings ? When do the Fathers of Regiments as- 
semble to pray for their soldier-sons ? If boys 
need their mothers' prayers, they need also their 
fathers' prayers. Does the fervent, effectual prayer 
of righteous women avail so much that righteous 
men can feel they have nothing to do but give 
themselves up to their farms and their merchan- 
dise, to buy and to sell and to get gain ? Can 
men wait upon the Lord by proxy ? Shall we 
bring political economy into religion, and arrange a 
wise division of labor by which the wife shall serve 
God, and the husband shall serve Mammon, — the 
wife do the praying and the husband see to the 
marketing, — he make sure of this world and she 
look out for the next ? It is a nice little arrange- 
ment, but ^— He that sitteth in the heavens shall 
laugh ; the Lord shall have it in derision. 

But fathers must attend to their business. They 
must earn money to support the family. They 
must provide wherewith to keep the pot boiling. 
Certainly they must ; but it requires no more 
time, or attention, or ingenuity, or vitality, or 
strength, or spirits, or endurance, no more ex- 
penditure of any of the forces of life, to go out and 



144 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

earn something to put into the pot, than it does to 
stay at home and boil it. If the mother, with her 
harassing cares, the never-ending details of her 
never-ending work, can find time for studying her 
maternal relations and responsibilities, and com- 
paring her experience with that of others for pur- 
poses of improvement and the highest efficiency, 
and for joining in social prayer for the blessing of 
God on her efforts, the father can find time for sim- 
ilar study, effort, and prayer. If she can leave her 
baby, he can leave his books. If she can leave "her 
kitchen, he can leave his counting-room. His 
bench, his desk, his fields, his office, are no more 
exacting than her nursery, her laundry, her work- 
basket. Women will go to the mothers' meeting 
who have to sit up till one o'clock in the morn- 
ing to darn the little frock, and patch the old coat 
that must be worn that day ; and sometimes they 
do it from stern necessity, without having the con- 
solation of any mothers' meeting to go to. Let 
men but be as earnest in their purpose, as sincere 
in their belief, let them feel that the souls of their 
children are in their hands as keenly as mothers 
feel their responsibility, and business would straight- 
way relax its claims and withdraw into the back- 
ground, 'where it belongs. If a great general is 
come to town, if a famous regiment is to have a 
reception, if a long-looked-for statue has safely 
crossed the sea and is to be set up, if a foreign 
fleet lies in the harbor and is to send its officers 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 145 

on shore, if a young Prince is to pass through the 
city on his way home, men rush together in masses 
so dense as to endanger Hmb and hfe. Business 
is the last thing that interposes any obstacle to 
seeing and hearing that which a man determines 
to see and hear. 

Business ? What is man's business ? Is it 
to take care of that which is temporary or that 
which is permanent ; that which belongs to mat- 
ter, or that which belongs to mind ; that which 
he shares in common with the beasts, or that which 
allies him to the angels, — nay, more, which con- 
stitutes in him the image and likeness of God? 
A man's business is to support his family. Cer- 
tainly. He that provideth not for his own house- 
hold hath denied the faith, and is worse than an 
infidel. I agree to that with all my heart. But 
what is he to provide? Food, raiment, shelter? 
These first, for without these is nothing ; but these 
not last, for he who stops here and turns his pow- 
ers into another channel is guilty of high crime. 
If his children were calves, lambs, chickens, he 
would do so much for them ; because they are 
human beings, he must do somewhat more. But 
how many of the fathers who make business their 
plea for not watching over their children, who 
are away from home from seven in the morn- 
ing till seven at night, who from year's end to 
year's end, except on Sunday and perhaps two 
or three festive days, see their children only at 
T ^ 



146 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

hurried meals, and snatch a kiss, perhaps, after they 
are in bed and asleep, who know no more about 
the inward and hourly Hfe of their own than of 
their neighbor's children, — how many of these 
fathers are spending their time and talents in the 
sole business of getting food, clothes, and shelter, or 
even books and educational opportunities for their 
families ? How many of these men earn just that 
and no more ? It is not the support of families, it 
is not business, it is not necessity alone, on which 
they lavish themselves. It is their own pride or 
luxury or inclination. They wish to extend their 
business, to acquire wealth, or a competence, to be 
known as enterprising, public-spirited men, to be 
chosen on committees and sent to the legisla- 
ture, all right, if rightly come by, but terribly 
wrong, worthless, perishable with the using, and 
of no important use, if children are to be given in 
barter for them. 

" This is all very well to talk about," you say ; 
" but a man cannot do anything in this world with- 
out money, and he cannot make money unless he 
sticks to his business." Ah, my friend ! so far as 
the best things of this world are concerned, you 
cannot do anything with money, and you cannot 
make good men and women unless you stick to your 
children. Will money give you back the little 
baby-soul whose tender unfolding had such sweet- 
ness and healing for you, but which you lost be- 
cause you would not stop long enough to look at 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 147 

it in your mad world-ways ? Will money give 
you the saving influence over your boy which 
might have kept him from vicious companions and 
vicious habits, — an influence which your constant 
interest, intercourse, and example in his boyish 
days might have established, but which seemed to 
you too trivial a thing to win you from your darhng 
pursuit of gains ? Will money make you the friend 
and confidant of your daughter, the joy of her 
heart, and the standard of her judgment, so that 
her ripening youth shall give you intimacy, inter- 
change of thought and sentiment, and you shall 
give to her a measure to estimate the men around 
her, and a steady light that shall keep her from 
Toeing beguiled by the lights that only lead astray ? 
Will it give you back the children who have 
rushed out wildly or strayed indifferently from the 
house which you have never taken pains to make 
a home, but have been content to turn into a 
hotel, with only less of liberty ? Will money make 
you the heart as well as the head of your family, 
— honored, revered, beloved ? 

If your firm transacts business on a capital of a 
hundred thousand instead of half a million dollars, 
what is it but a little less paper, fewer clerks, and 
narrower rooms? Though your farm have but 
fifty instead of two hundred acres, there is just 
as much land on the earth. Suppose you argue 
before a jury only two cases to-day instead of 
three, there are a dozen young advocates who will 



148 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

he glad of the crumbs that fall from your table, 
and Fate will mete out her sure, rough-handed 
justice. With half the business you are doing 
now, could not you and your family be comforta- 
bly and decently fed, clothed, and sheltered ? 
House, dress, and furniture might not be so fine, 
but something of more worth than they would 
be finer. A family's support does not necessarily 
involve sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen, 
damask and rosewood. If the choice lies between 
Turkey carpets, or even three-ply, under a child's 
feet, and a father's hand clasping his to guide his 
steps, what man who believes — I will not say in 
immortality, but in virtue, — what father who is 
not utterly unworthy to bear the sacred name, can 
for one moment waver ? 

Every man, and especially every father, should 
aim to have a character that shall alone have 
weight both with his fellow-citizens and his chil- 
dren. His integrity should be so unimpeachable 
that his motives shall be unquestioned. So far 
as his reputation is truthful, it should be firmly 
grounded on moral virtues and moral graces, so 
that his word shall have a force quite independent 
of his surroundings. He should be strong enough 
to be able to live in a plain house, and wear plain 
clothes, and deny himself, not only luxuries, but 
comforts and beauties, for the sake of his children's 
society and improvement, without forfeiting the 
respect and esteem of his neighbors or inflicting 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 149 

any pain of mortification upon his children. You 
cannot do anything in this world without money, if 
money is your sole or your chief claim to considera- 
tion ; but, in the face of ten thousand denials, I 
would still maintain that it is possible to attain a 
character and a standing that shall set money at 
defiance. He who refuses to believe this, and acts 
upon a contrary belief, shows not only a want of 
real inward dignity, but of a knowledge of history 
and of life. A picture of Raphael, fitly framed 
and hung, is a treasure to be prized beyond words ; 
but with no frame at all, and hung in the dreary 
parlor of a village inn, it is worth more, and would 
be more widely sought and more highly prized 
than a palaceful of commonplace paintings. Let 
all the accessories be as beautiful as you can com- 
mand ; but at all events make sure of the picture. 
He is not a wise man who expends all his energies 
on the frame, and trusts to luck for the painting. 

Noi> is it any excuse to say that you must lay 
up provision against tlje future. No one has any 
right to sacrifice the present to the future. You 
do not know that you will have any future. " The 
present, the present, is all thou hast for thy sure 
possessing." You may forego present luxuries 
for future needs or for future luxuries, but you 
may not forego present needs for future possi- 
bilities. If besides performing the duty of to- 
day you can also lay up money for to-morrow, 
it is well; but to slight a certain to-day for an 



150 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

uncertain to-morrow, is all ill. Provide, if you 
can, means to send your boy to college, to edu- 
cate your daughter, to shelter your old age ; yet, 
remember, before those means can be used, the 
boy, the girl, the man, may lie each in his silent 
grave ; but though there may never be a college 
student, a ripening maiden, a gray-haired man, 
there is now a little boy, a little girl, who stand in 
need of their father ; and a father is of more worth 
to his son than a college, of more worth to his 
daughter than many tutors. Train them in the 
way they should go, going yourself before them 
with a steady step, and trust God for that future 
against which you are unable to provide. 

And this remember : the very best provision 
against the future is investments in heart and mus- 
cle and brain. Money without them is worth- 
less. They without money are still inestimable 
riches. If your son at twenty-one is alienated 
from his father, dissipated, headstrong, weak, a 
source of anxiety and trouble to his family, he 
will pierce your heart through with many sorrows, 
though you have hundreds of thousands of dollars 
laid up for him in the bank. If your daughter 
is a frivolous, woman, the silks with which your 
wealth enables you to adorn her, the society with 
which it may perhaps enable you to surround 
her, will only set her folly in a stronger light. 
But if your children stand on the threshold of 
their manhood and their womanhood, strong, self- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 151 

poised, mailed for defence and armed for warfare, 
glad and grateful for the love that has forged 
each weapon and taught Its skilful handling, no 
king on his throne is so blessed as you. They 
have all that they need to conquer the world. 
Your money may be a snare to your child, your 
wisdom never. If you lose your money, it Is gone 
forever. The child whom your love is enriching 
with youthful health and promise may go before 
you suddenly out of the world, but your labor 
and your love are not lost. Somewhere, under a 
warmer sun than this, his earthly promise bursts 
into the full blossom and the mellow fruit of 
performance more beautiful than eye can see or 
heart conceive. 

The adequate care and guidance of the family 
which he has founded Is a man's business in life. 
Farming, preaching, and shopkeeping are second- 
ary matters, to be regulated according to the needs 
of the family. The family is not to be regulated 
by their requirements. And a family's needs are 
not gay clothing and rich food, but a husband and 
father. It is the great duty of his life to be ac- 
quainted with his children, to know their charac- 
ter, their tastes, their tendencies, to know who are 
their associates, and what are their associations, 
what books they read, and what books they like to 
read, to gratify their innocent desires, to lop off 
their excrescences and bring out their excellences, 
to know them as a good farmer knows his soil, 



152 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

draining the bogs into fertile meadows and turning 
the watercourses into channels of beauty and life. 
He may furnish his children opportunities without 
number, but the one thing beyond all others which 
he owes them is himself. He may provide tutors 
and schools ; but to no tutor and no school can he 
pass over his relationship and its responsibilities. 
If he is a stranger to his children, if they are 
strangers to him, he shall be found wanting when 
he is weio-hed in the balance. 

Niebuhr, we are told by his biographer, '^ con- 
sidered the training of his children, especially of 
his son, as the most imperative duty of his life, to 
which all other considerations, except that of very 
evident and important service to his country, 
ought to be subordinated. In ordinary times he 
placed private duties above public ones." Before 
the child was born his fatherly fondness was plan- 
ning schemes for the future. " In case it should 
be a boy, I am already preparing myself to edu- 
cate him. I should try to familiarize him very 
early with the ancient languages, by making him 
repeat sentences after me, and relating stories to 
him in them, in order that he might not have too 
much to learn afterwards, nor yet read too much 
at too early an age ; but receive his education after 
the fashion of the ancients. I think I should 
know how to educate a boy, but not a girl ; I 
should be in danger of making her too learned. 
.... I would relate innumerable stories to the 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 153 

boy, as my father did to me ; but by degrees mix 
up more and more of Greek and Latin in them, 
so that he would be forced to learn those lan- 
guages in order to understand the stories." By 
and by, when the child is eight months old, we 
find him curtailing his literary investigations be- 
cause he is " moreover, just now, too much occu- 
pied with Marcuccio." When " Marcuccio " is 
five years old his father writes : " We have daily 
proofs of Marcus's noble nature ; still I am well 
aware that this affords us no guaranty, unless it 

be guided with the most watchful care I 

succeed with teaching as well as I could have 

ventured to hope I am reading with him 

Hy gin's Mythologicum, — a book which, perhaps, 
it is not easy to use for this purpose, and which, 
yet, is more suited to it than any other, from the 
absence of formal periods, and the interest of the 
narrative. For German, I write fragments of 
the Greek mythology for him I give every- 
thing in a very free and picturesque style, so that 
it is as exciting as poetry to him ; and, in fact, he 
reads it with such delight that we are often inter- 
rupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite de- 
voted to me ; but this educating costs me a great 
deal of time. However, I have had my share of 
life, and I shall consider it as a reward for my la- 
bors if this young life be as fully and richly de- 
veloped as lies within my power." 
If Niebuhr, one of the most learned men of his 

7# 



154 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

time, ambassador of Prussia to Rome, with all the 
business to transact, not only of Prussia, but of all 
the petty German powers that had no minister of 
their ow€i, engaged in minute and abstruse histori- 
cal investigation bearing upon a work with which 
he was occupied and which may be said to have 
revolutionized Roman history, — if his time was 
not too valuable to bestow upon the amusement, 
the affection, and the education of a baby, where 
shall we find, in America, a man whose valuable 
time shall be a sufficient reason for the neglect of 
his children? It may not be necessary or desirable 
to copy Niebuhr's course with exactness. His 
residence in Rome devolved upon him a larger 
part of the mental education of the boy than would 
have been necessary at home. I am also inclined 
to think that he was too careful and troubled, and 
did not have faith enough in Nature and God. 
But the point which I wish to show is, that, in the 
midst of his numerous and important duties, he 
found time for his child ; and if he could do so 
much, surely those who have not one tenth part 
of his duties and responsibilities, either in num- 
ber or weight, can find time to do the far less 
service which devolves upon them. If they can- 
not, there is but one resource. If a man is not 
able to be both statesman and father, both mer- 
chant and father, or lawyer and father, or farmer 
and father, he ought to elect which he will be, and 
confine himself to his choice^ If he is too much 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 155 

absorbed in scientific pursuits, or if he is not a 
sufficiently dextrous workman to be able to se- 
cure from his bench time enough to attend to other 
interests, he ought not to create other interests. 
No man has any right to assume the charge of 
two positions when he has the abihty to perform 
the duties of but one. If he alone bore the evil 
consequences of his shortcomings, he would be 
less blameworthy, but the chief burden falls upon 
his children and upon the state. Reckless of 
moral obligation, mindful only of his own self- 
ish impulses, the fruits of his recklessness and 
selfishness are, — not houses that tumble down 
upon their builders, machinery that cannot bear its 
own strain, garments that perish with the first 
using, — these are bad enough, but these are 
harmlessness itself compared with the evils which 
he causes. The harvest of his headlong wicked- 
ness is living beings who must bear their life for- 
ever. He bids into the world, tender little inno- 
cent souls, knowing that he cannot or will not 
stand guard over them to w^ard off the fierce, 
wild devils that lie in wait to rend them. Plastic 
to his touch, they may be moulded to vessels of 
honor or vessels of dishonor, for the promise of 
God is absolute, yea, and amen. Yet he turns 
aside to fritter away his time over newspapers, to 
talk politics, to buy and sell and get unnecessary 
gain, and leaves them to other hands, to chance 
comers, to all manner of warping and hardening 



156 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

influences, so that their after-lives must be one 
long and bitter struggle against early acquired 
deformity, or a fatal yielding and a fatal torpor 
whose end is deadly dismay. 

But in popular opinion and by common usage 
all is thrown upon the mother. By all tradition 
she is the centre, the heart, the mainspring, of 
the household. From what newspaper, what book, 
what lecture, would you learn that fathers have 
anything to do at home but to go into their slip- 
pers and dressing-gowns, and be luxuriously fed 
and softly soothed into repose ? The care and 
management of the children fall upon the mother. 
Who does all the fine things in the pretty nurs- 
ery rhymes? "My mother." It is her sphere, 
divinely circled. All the fitnesses of her life point 
in that one direction. All men's hands are so 
many finger-posts saying, " This is the way, walk 
ye in it." 

It is the mother's sphere to take motherly care 
of her children. It is the father's sphere to take 
fatherly care. Neither can leave his duties to the 
other without danger. The family system is a 
combination of the solar and the binary systems. 
All the little bodies whirl around a common cen- 
tre, but that centre is no solitary orb. It is two 
suns, self-luminous, revolving around each other, 
and neither able to throw upon its mate the bur- 
den of its shining. 

Many fathers seem to think that they have 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 157 

nothing to do with their children except to caress 

them and frolic with them an hour or two in the 

evening, until they are old enough to be assistants 

in work. But just as soon as there is the fatherly 

relation, there is the fatherly duty. A baby in a 

house is a well-spring of pleasure ; but it is also 

a well-spring of care and anxiety immeasurable, of 

whose waters there is no reason why the father 

should not drink as deeply as the mother. The 

glory, the honor, the immortality, will shed a full 

light upon him, and he also 

" With heart of thankfulness should bear 
Of the great common burden his full share." 

I have seen a great deal of pleasantry played oiF 
against the doctrines of woman's rights in news- 
papers, pictorial and otherwise ; the wife is repre- 
sented as being immersed in public employments, 
while the meek, sad husband stays at home and 
minds the baby. I do not know that any impor- 
tant ends would be answered by an indiscriminate 
female-haranguing in the market-place ; but I do 
know that it would be a great deal better for all 
concerned if fathers would pay more attention to 
the little ones. Womanly gentleness and tender- 
ness, and long-suffering to-baby-ward reads sweetly 
in books, rounds graceful periods from melodious 
lips, and is the loveliest of all modes of levying 
black mail. But when you come down to matters 
of fact, a fractious child is just as likely to be 
quieted by its father's lullaby as by its mother's, 



158 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

if you pm the father down to lullabies. Men who 
are inclined to take care of their children never 
find any hinderance in their manhood. Male 
nurses for children are no less efficient than female 
nurses. It is not his sex, but his selfishnes^, that 
makes man's unfitness. He will not endure the 
tedium of soothing and tending his child. He 
knows the mother will, and he lets her do it. 
Her fitness is a good excuse for his self-indulgence. 
But if he is disposed to take the trouble, he can 
do it often as well as she ; often better, for the 
mother's weaker and wearier nerves and greater 
sensitiveness act on the little one and increase its 
irritability, while the father's strength and calm- 
ness are a sort of soporific. Somebody says that a 
mother's arm is the strongest thing in the world. 
It upbears the child as she walks back and forth 
through the long night-hours soothing its restless- 
ness and pain, and never tires. Vastly well 
spoken. Suppose, O smooth-tongued Seignior, 
you take a turn with the baby yourself, and see 
whether your arm tires. If it does, do not for one 
moment indulge in the pleasing illusion that hers 
does not. It is made of flesh and blood and bones 
just like yours, and like causes produce hke ef- 
fects. But what is true is, that her unselfish 
mother-love is so strong that she keeps on, not- 
withstanding the ache. Go and do thou likewise. 
I do not say that fathers will not. Many do, and 
what man has done man may do. Leave female 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 159 

endurance to poetry, and remember that in actual 
life the laws of bone and muscle are as fixed as 
any other laws of natural philosophy, and that 
action is surely followed by fatigue. Walk you 
the floor with the baby in your arms, if he must 
be carried, at least two hours to her one, because 
your arms were stronger to begin with, and be- 
cause hers have an added weakness from the ad- 
vent of this little round-limbed Prince. Do not, 
above all things, betake yourself to a remote and 
silent part of the house and dream your pleasant 
dreams, while the mother loses her sleep and her 
rest by the ailing and fretful baby. But a man's 
rest must not be broken. Why not as well as a 
woman's ? He must have a clear head and a firm 
hand to transact the next day's business. But 
what is she going to do ? The cases are so in- 
numerous as to form a very insignificant propor- 
tion wherein the American mother is not also cook, 
laundress, seamstress, housekeeper, and chamber- 
maid, with sometimes one awkward, ignorant, 
inefficient Irish servant, rarely two, and not rarely 
Hone at all. As a matter of moral economy the 
care of a baby is enough to occupy any woman's 
time, and is all the care she ought to have. As I 
have before said, even under the curse, this is the 
arrangement that was made for her. Her mother- 
hood frees her from toil ; but man's care is heavier 
than God's curse, and she too often bears on her own 
head both her punishment and his. If he makes 



160 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

such provision for her that she has absolutely no 
other than her maternal duties, she can afford, 
perhaps, to lose her rest at night, since she can 
make it up in the daytime ; and unquestionably 
nature has fitted babies to mothers more closely 
than to fathers; but to lay upon her, besides the 
care of her children, all manner of other cares, 
and then leave her with aching nerves and weak- 
ened frame and failing heart to worry it out as she 
may, is a culpable cruelty for which no amount 
of pretty sentiment is the smallest atonement.* 

There are so many ways where there is a will ! 
There are so many opportunities for usefulness, if 
a man would only improve them. How many 
times does the merchant, the lawyer, the busy 
business man, stop at the street-corners, or in his 
own haunts, to chat with friends? How many 
hours there are in the twenty-four when a man 
might run down from his study, come in earlier 
from his shop, take a recess from his fields, and 
rest himself and his wife by giving the little one a 

* I like sometimes to take my views out on an airing, before 
making a final disposition of them, just to see how they are 
received. On one such occasion, an excellent man, in comfort- 
able circumstances, expressed his very hearty dissent from my 
opinions about woman's work. He thought women had a 
pretty easy time of it, and appealed to his wife, just then enter- 
ing the room, to say what had been her own experience. I 
wish type could convey the clear, ringing decisiveness and in- 
cisiveness of the tone with which she instantaneously responded, 
" Harassed to death ! " 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 161 

ride in the basket-wagon, or the elegant carriage, 
or amusing it on the carpet, while tired mamma 
lies down for a much-needed nap, or turns off a 
greater amount of belated mending or cooking 
than she could do in four hours with baby. 
And what benefit would not the man himself re- 
ceive, what gradual diminution of his selfishness in 
thus waiting upon the helplessness of this little 
creature. Under what bonds for the future and 
for virtue does it not lay him ? Let him look down 
upon his baby with earnest eyes, and inwardly 
resolve to be himself a man pure and honorable as 
he wishes this boy to be ; let him remember to bear 
himself toward all women as he would have all men 
bear themselves to the tiny woman in his arms. 

There are men who assume and act on the as- 
sumption that their days must be kept free from 
childish interlopers. They are aggrieved, their 
personal rights are infringed upon, they have a 
most heavy and undeserved yoke to bear if the 
children are not hustled out of their way, — as if 
children were a kind of luxury and plaything of 
women in which they may be indulged, if they 
will be careful to confine them to their own 
department, nor ever let them encroach on the 
peculiar domains of the lord of the manor. There 
are women weak enough to give in to this assump- 
tion, and make it a rule that the children are 
not to disturb their father. Before he comes 
into the house the crying baby must be hushed at 



162 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

any cost, or removed beyond his hearing. The 
little ones are not allowed to enter his study, 
they must not play in the hall near it, nor in the 
garden under his window, because the noise dis- 
turbs him. When the mood takes him, he takes 
them. He goes into the nursery and has a merry 
romp with them, and when he is tired of it or they 
begin to take too many liberties, he goes out again 
and thinks his children are very charming. Or 
possibly he never goes into the nursery at all, — 
a lack of interest which would be very unwom- 
anly in a w^oman, but is not the the least unmanly 
nor absolutely unknown in a man. It is a great 
affliction to the mother, if, in consequence of a 
temporary neglect of picket-duty, he puts his head 
into the kitchen or sewing-room, to say with heroic 
self-control, '' Carrie, the children are so in and 
out that it is impossible for me to do anything." 
An impatient upward look from his newspaper 
causes her a shiver of dread. Small table-skir- 
mishes are put to an untimely end by mamma's 
hurrying the unlucky belligerents out of sight and 
sound of their outraged sire, and the one Medo- 
Persic law of the family is at all risks to rescue 
the father from every inconvenience and annoy- 
ance from the children. The kind, devoted woman 
shuts them carefully up within her own precincts. 
They may overrun her without stint. They may 
climb her chair, pull her work about, upset her 
basket, scratch the bureau, cut the sofa, run to her 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 163 

for healing in every little heart-ache ; but no mat- 
ter. They are kept from disturbing papa. I am 
amazed at the folly of women ! Kept from dis- 
turbing papa ? Rather hound them on, if there 
must be any intervention ! Put the crying baby 
in his arms the moment he enters the house, and 
be sure to run away at once beyond his reach, or 
with true masculine ingenuity he will be sure at 
the end of five minutes to find some pretext for 
delivering the young orator back into your care. 
So far from carefully withholding the children from 
the paternal vicinage, at the first symptoms of ex- 
clusiveness, set a paper of candy and a set of drums 
at his door to toll the children thither. But this 
only in extreme cases. If he is ordinarily reason- 
able, the right course is to do neither, but let 
things take their own way. Except in case of ill- 
ness or some unusual and pressing emergency, the 
little ones ought not to be kept from either of their 
lawful owners. The serenity of one is no more 
sacred than the serenity of the other. The father 
must simply take the natural consequences of his 
children. If they drift into his current, he must 
bear them on. He ought to experience their ob- 
viousness, their inconvenience, their distraction. 
It is no worse for a chubby hand to upset the ink- 
stand on his papers, than for it to upset the molas- 
ses-pitcher upon the table-cloth. It is no worse 
for his experiments, his study, his reading, to be 
interrupted, than it is for his wife's sewing. He 



164 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

can write his letters, or stand behind the counter, 
or make shoes, with a baby in his arms, just as 
well as she can make bread and set the table wdth 
a baby in her arms. Let him come into actual 
close contact with his children and see what they 
are and what they do, and he will have far more 
just ideas of the whole subject than if he stands 
far off and, from old theories on the one side and 
ten minutes of clean apron and bright faces on 
the other, pronounces his euphonious generaliza- 
tions. His children wull elicit as much love and 
admiration and interest as now, together with a 
great deal more knowledge and a gi'eat deal less 
silly, mannish sentimentalism. 




IX. 




UT whatever may be the opportunities 
and capabiHties of infantine gymnastics, 
there is always one way in which fathers 
may indirectly, but very powerfully, 
influence their children, and that is through the 
mother. When her little children are around her, 
she needs above all earthly things the strength, 
support, society, and sympathy of her husband. 
It is wellnigh impossible to conceive the demand 
which a little child makes upon its mother's vital- 
ity. In Nature's plan, I believe, the supply is al- 
ways equal to the demand. The new, fresh life 
gives back through a thousand channels all the life 
it draws. But if the mother is left alone, in such 
a solitude as is never found outside of marriage, 
but often and often within it ; if she is left to seek 
in her baby her chief solace, unhappy is her fate. 
The little one exhausts her physical strength, and 
the inattentive and abstracted — alas ! that one 
may not seldom say, the unkind and overbearing 
husband fails to supply her with moral strength, 



166 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

and her weary feet go on with ever-diminishing 
joy. All this is unnecessary. All this is contrary 
to the Divine economy. Every child ought to be 
a new spring of life, an El Dorado, fountain of 
immortal youth. Whether it shall be or not lies, 
if you look at it from one point, wholly with the 
husband, or if you look at it from another, wholly 
with the wife. On the one hand, each is all- 
powerful. On the other, each is powerless. But 
the husband has always the advantage of strength, 
out-door activities, and continual commerce with 
the world, and consequent variety. The wife, 
surrounded by her children, is in danger of giv- 
ing herself up to them entirely. She will inces- 
santly dispense her life" without being careful to 
furnish herself for such demands by opening her 
soul to new accessions. Here is where her hus- 
band should stand by her continually to encourage 
and stimulate. If she is not strong enough to go 
out into the world, let him bring the world home 
to her. He should by all means see to it that her 
heart and soul do not contract. Every child, every 
added experience, should have the effect of ex- 
panding her horizon, deepening and enlarging her 
sympathies, and enabling her to gather the whole 
earth into her motherly love. Her little world 
ought to be a type of the great world. The wis- 
dom which she gathers in the one, she ought to 
turn to the good of the other, — a good that will 
surely come back again in other shapes to her fam- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 167 

ily world. So, every family should be both a mis- 
sionary centre and the medium through which, in 
never-ending flow, all good and gracious influ- 
ences shall pour.* Every family should rise and 
fall with the pulse of humanity, and not be a mere 
knob of organic matter, without dependencies or 
connections. But the father should see to this. 
He should gently lure the mother out of her 
nursery into such broad fresh air as she needs for 
healthy growth. What that shall be is a ques- 
tion of character and culture. A lyceum lec- 
ture, a sewing-society, an evening party, a con- 
cert, a county fair, may be elevation, amusement, 
improvement to her. Or he may do her most 
good by helping her to be interested in read- 
ing, either in the current or in classic literature. 
Or, best of all, he may charm her with his own 
companionship, beguile her with pleasant drives, 
or walks and talks, keeping her heart open on the 
husband side, and so continually alive, while main- 
taining also the oneness which marriage in theory 
creates. It is this respect in which husbands are 
perhaps most generally deficient. They do not 
talk with their wives. If a neighbor is married, 
they tell of it. If a battle is fought, or a village 
burnt down, they communicate the fact ; but for 
any interchange of thought or sentiment or emo- 
tion, for any conversation that is invigorating, in- 
spiring, that causes a thrill or leaves a glow^ how 
often does such a thing occur between husband and 



168 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

wife ? What intellectual meeting is there, — 
what shock of electricities ? When a definite do- 
mestic question is to be decided, the wife's judg- 
ment may be sought, and that is better than a soli- 
tary stumbling on, regardless of her views or feel- 
ings ; but this sort of bread-and-butter discussion 
of ways and means is not the gentle, animated play 
of conversation, not that pleasant sparkle which 
enlivens the hours, that trustful confidence which 
lightens the heart, that wielding of weapons 
which strengthens the arm, that sweet, instinctive 
half unveiling which increases respect and deepens 
love and fills the heart with inexpressible tender- 
ness. Yet there is nobody in the world with whom 
it is so important for a man to be intimately ac- 
quainted as his own wife, while such intimate ac- 
quaintance is the exception rather than the rule. 
Ever one sees them going on each in his own 
path, each with his own inner world of opinions 
and hopes and memories, one in name, miserably 
two in all else. 

Men often have too much confidence in their 
measuringJines. They fancy they have fathomed 
a soul's depths when they have but sounded its 
shallows. They think they have circumnavigated 
the globe when they have only paddled in a cove. 
They trim their sails for other seas, leaving the 
priceless gems of their own undiscovered. To 
many a man no voyage of exploration would bring 
such rich returns as a persevering and affectionate 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 169 

search into the resources of the heart which he 
calls his own. Many and many a man would be 
amazed at learning that in the tame household 
drudge, in the meek, timid, apologetic recipient 
of his caprices, in the worn and fretful invalid, in 
the commonplace, insipid domestic weakling he 
scorns an angel unawares. Many a wife is wearied 
and neglected into moral shabbiness, who, rightly 
entreated, would have walked sister and wife of 
the gods. Human nature in certain directions is 
as infinite as the Divine nature, and when a man 
turns away from his wife, under the impression 
that he has exhausted her capabilities, and must 
seek elsewhere the sympathy and companionship 
he craves or go without it altogether, let him re- 
flect that the chances are at least even that he 
has but exhausted himself, and that the soil which 
seems to him fallow might in other hands or with 
a wiser culture yield most plenteous harvests. 

There is another point which should be kept 
in solemn consideration. The deportment of chil- 
dren to their parents is very largely influenced 
by the deportment of parents to each other. It 
is of small service that a child be taught to 
repeat the formula, " Honor thy father and thy 
mother," if, by his bearing, the father continually 
dishonors the mother. The Monday courtesy 
has more effect than the Sunday commandment. 
Every conjugal impoliteness is a lesson in filial 

disrespect. If a son sees that his father is regard- 
8 



170 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

less of his mother's taste, does not respect her 
opinions, or heed her sensitiveness or care for her 
happiness ; or if, on the other hand, he sees that 
she is held in ever- watchful love, he will be very 
likely to follow in the same path. There are of 
course exceptions. A gross and brutal abuse may 
work an opposite effect by the law of contrarieties, 
but in ordinary cases this is the ordinary course 
of events. In common Christian families a boy 
will appraise his mother at his father's valuation. 
If the husband takes the liberty of speaking to 
her sharply, the son when irritated will not think 
it worth while to repress his inclination to do the 
same. If the husband is not careful to pay her 
outward respect, let it not be supposed that his 
son will set him the example. But if the hus- 
band cherishes her with delight, if his behavior 
always assumes that the best is to be reserved 
for her, the best will be her incense from the 
whole family, and no son will any more allow 
himself to indulge any evil propensity in her pres- 
ence than he would pluck out his right eye. And 
in the delicacy, the refinement, the gentleness and 
warmth and consecration of her presence all this 
courtesy and consideration will come back to them 
a hundred-fold in constant dews of blessing. 

As with habits so with principles. The moth- 
er's influence is strong, but the stories told of its 
strength are often hurtful in their tendency. It is 
not the strength of the mother's, but of the father's 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 171 

influence, that needs to be held up to prominence. 
By Divine sufferance, mothers can do much to 
abrogate the evil consequences of paternal mis- 
doing, — but paternal misdoing is not for that any 
the less evil. If the husband laughs at his wife's 
temperance notions, and thinks wine-sipping to be 
elegant and harmless, his boy will sip wine ele- 
gantly and fancy his mother old-fashioned ; and 
with his father's appetite, but without his father's 
strength, and with more than his father's tempta- 
tions, — in the great city, homeless, bewildered, and 
dazzled, — he will rush on to a bitter end. If the 
husband thinks religion a thing beautiful and be- 
coming to woman, but unnecessary to manly char- 
acter, his son will not long go to church and to 
Sunday school when he feels in his veins the thrill 
of approaching manhood. I know a community 
where not a man can be found to superintend the 
Sabbath school, and a woman, noble and whole- 
souled, takes its charge upon herself. The fa- 
thers do not disbelieve in Sunday schools, or they 
w^ould not suffer their wives and children to go. 
They do not believe in them, or they would go 
themselves. They are simply indifferent, — and 
indifferent in. a matter so important, that indif- 
ference is guilt. Will the young men of that 
community be likely to fear God and keep his 
commandments ? Will they be likely to acknowl- 
edge the claims of a religion which their fathers 
despise ? If they grow up hardened, selfish, head- 



172 A NEW ATMOSPHERE 

strong, unfortified against assault, will it be the 
fault of the mothers who are struggling against 
wind and tide, or of the fathers wHo are lazily 
lounging at oar and rudder ? 

People in general are not half married. Half ? 
If one would mathematically approximate the 
truth, he must multiply his denominator far be- 
yond reach of the digits ; and, what is still worse, 
the fraction that is married is, in a vast majority 
of cases, not only the least, but the lowest. It is 
not the intellect, the spirit, the immortality, that 
is married, but that alone which is of the earth, 
earthy. 

Xenophon, in his Memorahilia Socratis^ presents 
to us Ischomacus, an Athenian of great riches and 
reputation, repairing to Socrates for help in ex- 
tricating him from domestic entanglements. In 
laying the case before the philosopher, Ischomacus 
informs him that he told his wife that his main 
object in marrying her was to have a person in 
whose discretion he could confide, who would take 
proper care of his servants, and expend his money 
with economy, — which was certainly very frank. 

But that w^as twenty-three hundred years ago, 
and people have grown less material and more 
spiritual since then. No man now would hold out 
to a woman such inducement to marriage. Cer- 
tainly not. Men now wait till the Rubicon is 
passed, and then lay down their pleasant little 
programmes in the newspapers, — general prin- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 173 

ciples for private consumption. The popular voice, 
speaking in your everywhere circulating newspa- 
per, says : " A man gets a wife to look after his 
"affairs, and to assist him in his journey through 
life; to educate and prepare their children for a 
proper station in life, and not to dissipate his prop- 
erty. The husband's interest should be the wife's 
care, and her greatest ambition to carry her no 
farther than his welfare or happiness, together with 
that of her children. This should be her sole aim, 
and the theatre of her exploits in the bosom of her 
family, where she may do as much toward making 
a fortune as he can in the counting-room or the 
workshop." 

Is this very much more commanding than the 
attitude of Ischomacus ? Does Anno Domini loom 
with immeasurable grandeur above Anno Mundi ? 
Ischomacus wanted his wdfe to manage his fortune. 
Young America wants his to help make one. Is 
it a very great stride in advance, considering we 
have been twenty-three centuries about it ? This 
extract I take from a religious newspaper, and it is 
pagan to the heart's core ; yes, and in these mat- 
ters the Church is as pagan as the World. Be* 
cause a man is folded in the Church, one has no 
more expectation of finding in him spiritual views 
concerning marriage than if he belonged to the 
World. Unmitigated selfishness, worldliness, greed, 
and evil-seeking are the roots and fruits of such a 
"religious" paragraph. Church and World are 



174 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

both gone aside and altogether become filthy. 
The holy sacrament is profaned alike by church- 
man and worldling. It is tossed on the spear-point 
of levity, it is clutched under the muck-rake of 
materialism, it is degraded and defiled till its pris- 
tine purity is wellnigh lost, and only a marred and 
defaced image rears its foul features from the mire. 
That it does not always cause disgust, is because 
the goddess is so chiefly hidden that women do 
not recognize the lineaments of the demon which 
has usurped her place. Miasma has polluted the 
atmosphere so long that people do not know the 
feeling of untainted air. O, it is good to speak your 
mind, be it onlv once in a lifetime ! Now I wish 
I had walked softly all my days, that, with all the 
force of a rare indignation, I might just this once 
crush down that hateful, that debasing, that vile 
and leprous thing which flaunts the name of mar- 
riage, but does not even put on the white garments 
of its sanctity to hide its own shame. Leer and 
laugh, coarse jest, advice, insinuation, interpreta- 
tion, and conjecture beslime the surface of our 
social life and work abomination. Nature and un- 
consciousness become impossible, and one is swal- 
lowed up in stagnant depths, or borne above them 
only with an inward, raging tempest of irrepressi- 
ble loathing. A blessing rest upon this pen-point 
that stamps black and heavy into receptive paper 
the wrath which it is not lawful otherwise to ex- 
press. Sentiments the most repulsive, the most 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 175 

insulting to womanhood and to a woman, may be 
coolly, carelessly, unconsciously tossed at you by 
and in society, and you must smile and parry with 
equal nonchalance. Thank Heaven for Guten- 
berg and Dr. Faustus, that whatsoever has been 
spoken in darkness may be heard to its shame in 
the light, and that which has been spoken in the 
ear may be proclaimed upon the house-tops with 
the detestation it deserves! 




X. 




TAY for a moment the pressure with 
which — though, perhaps, all unknown 
to themselves — you force women un- 
der the yoke of marriage, and let us 
look without passion at a few palpable, common- 
place facts. Women must marry because they 
need a protector. They are weak, and cannot 
safely go down life's pathway without a strong 
arm to lean on. What kind of protection do 
wives actually find ? I once looked into an old- 
fashioned house and I saw a woman, the mother 
of seven sons, heating her oven with the boughs 
of trees, which she could manage only by resting 
the branching ends on the backs of chairs while 
the trunk ends were burning in the oven, and as 
they brt)ke into coals the boughs were pushed in, 
till the whole was consumed. When her dinner 
was preparing, she would also take her pails and 
go through the hot summer morning a quarter of 
a mile to the spring for water. Was this " pro- 
tection, freedom, tender-liking, ease." This was 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 177 

not in a brutal and quarrelsome, but in a united 
and Christian family ; father and mother mem- 
bers of an Orthodox church in good and regular 
standing, owners of broad lands and plenty of 
money, the sons rather famous for their filial love 
and duty. It was not an unnatural thing, and 
excited no comment. The seven sons, all their 
lives, held their mother in affectionate remem- 
brance, but it never occurred to them to leave the 
hay-fields in order to cut wood or fetch water. 

This was sixty or seventy years ago, before any 
of you, my young readers, were born. 

Once a rich man built a barn, and of course he 
had "a raising." To the raising came the men 
and women from all the country-side, as was their 
wont. For the men was a supper provided with 
lavish abundance. Before they came in, thirty 
women sat down to supper. Of course, when 
came the men's turn to be served, these women 
gave assistance at the tables, but all the previous 
cooking and arrangement had been done by the 
women of the family, without outside help. Be- 
sides the hot meat supper, the men were furnished 
with unlimited drink ; cider, rum, and brandy 
were carried out to them by the pailful. An ex- 
perienced carpenter from an adjoining village de- 
clared that he would take the timber in the woods, 
hew it and frame it, and raise it for what the mere 
festivities of raising cost. To perform one little 
piece of work, the men laid upon the shoulders of 

8* L 



178 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

women a burden ten times heavier than their own, 
and incurred an expense which^ if put upon their 
large, square, bare *dwelling-house, would have 
given it beauties and conveniences, whose ab- 
sence was a continual and severe drawback to the 
women's comfort. They turned the woman's work 
into hard labor, that they might turn their *own 
into a frolic. Were those women protected ? 
That was only one instance, but that was the 
common machinery used in raising bams. That, 
too, was long ago. 

Once there existed a village containing four 
schools, which were in session three months in the 
summer and three months in the winter. At the 
beginning and end of the terms, the "commit- 
tee," of whom there were two in each " district,'^ 
used to visit the schools attended by the greater 
part of the adult male population of the district. 
At the conclusion of this visit, one of the district 
committee at the beginning of the term, and one 
at the end, was always expected to invite the other 
seven committee-men and all the visiting neighbors 
to his house to dinner. The hard-working farm- 
er's wife, or the butcher's, or the shoemaker's 
wife, with her four, five, seven, little children 
around her, and no servant, prepared her three 
roast turkeys, her three plum-puddings, and 
all the attendant dishes ; and the ten, twenty, 
thirty stalwart farmers, butchers, shoemakers, 
booted and burly, filed into her best room, swal- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 179 

lowed her roast turkeys and her plum-puddings, 
with no assistance from her except the most valued 
service of flitting around the table to keep their 
plates supplied, and then filed away to visit an- 
other school and swarm into another best room, 
leaving her to the bones, and the dishes, and the 
six little children. And this is man's protection. 
But this was the old times, you say. Yes, and 
you look back upon it with a sigh, and call it the 
^^ good old times." 

Well, the times have changed. They are no 
longer old, but new. Have we changed with them ? 
In a town I wot of, the doctors have a periodical 
meeting. They assemble in the evening by them- 
selves in a parlor, discussing no one knows what, 
among themselves, till ten or eleven o'clock, when 
they emerge into the dining-room and have a 
grand set-to upon lobster salads, stewed oysters, 
ices, and all manner of frothy fanfaronade. A 
minister is going to be ordained in a country vil- 
lage, and the village families round about heap up 
their tables and bid in all comers to feasts of fat 
things, A conference of churches is held in the 
meeting-house, and the same newspaper paragraph 
that notes the logical sermon and the gratifying 
reports of revivals, notes also the good things which 
the hospitable citizens provided, and the urgency 
with which strangers were pressed to partake. 
One would suppose that the reasoning of the fas- 
tidious old Jews was suspected to have descended 



180 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

to our own day and race, and that the sons of men 
must always come eating and drinking, or people 
will say they have a devil. 

Every advance in science or skill seems to be 
attended by a corresponding advance in the claims 
of the cooking-range. The palate keeps pace with 
the brain. The one presents a claim for every 
victory of the other. The left hand reaches out 
to clutch what the right hand is stretched out to 
offer to humanity. 

Now you all think this is very strange, — a most 
remarkable way of looking at things, a most inhos- 
pitable and cold-blooded view to take of society. 
What ! begrudge a little pains to give one's friends 
a pleasant reception ! and that only once a year, or 
a month ! It is such a thing as was never heard 
of. You have always looked upon the affair as 
one of pleasure. The houses which you have en- 
tered opened wide to you their doors. You met 
on all sides smiles, welcome, and good cheer. You 
never for a moment dreamed or heard of such a 
thing as that you were considered a trouble, a 
visitation. Perhaps you w^ere not. Very likely 
you were held in honor; but these customs are 
burdensome for all that. You must remember 
that by far the greater part of American house- 
wives are already overborne by their ordinary do- 
mestic cares. This makes the w^hole thing wear 
a very different aspect from what it otherwise 
would. If a cup is half full, you can pour in a 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 181 

great deal more, and only increase the cup's worth, 
for to such end was it created ; but if it is already 
brimmed, you cannot add even a teaspoonful with- 
out mischief, and if you suddenly dash in another 
cupful, you will make a sad mess of it. Now 
when these various convocations occur, the note 
of preparation is sounded long beforehand, and the 
M^ail of weariness echoes long afterwards. This is 
simply a statement of fact. I am not responsible 
for the fact. I did not create it, and I wish it 
were otherwise ; but so long as it is a fact, it 
is much better that it should be known. The 
woman who welcomed you so warmly, entreated 
you so tenderly, entertained you so agreeably, had 
no sooner shut the door behind you, when you had 
started for the church, than the sunshine which ra- 
diated from your presence went suddenly behind 
a cloud of odorous steam that rose up from stew- 
pan and gridiron. While you were listening to 
the eloquent address, she was flying about to 
have the dishes washed and the next meal ready. 
When, after your hour's pleasant talk in the even- 
ing over the day's doings, you were sleeping 
soundly in her airy chambers, she, as noiselessly 
as possible, till eleven and twelve o'clock at night, 
was sweeping her carpets and dusting her furniture 
in the only time which she could rescue from the 
duties of hospitality for that purpose. I maintain 
that, however agreeable are these social conven- 
tions, they are bought too dearly at such a price. 



182 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

A great many women who suffer from such causes 
never think of complaining. They are hospi- 
table from the bottom of their hearts ; but how- 
ever sincere their welcome, pies do not bake them- 
selves. Never a cow went in at one end of an 
oven to come out at the other a nicely-browned 
sirloin of beef. Never a barrel of flour and a 
bowl of yeast rushed spontaneously together and 
evoked a batch of bread, nor did the hen-fever at 
its hottest height ever produce bantam or Shang- 
hai that could lay eggs which would leap lightly 
ceiling-ward to come down an omelet. All these 
things require time and pains, and generally the 
time and pains of people who, by reason of the stern 
necessities of their position, have none of either to 
spare. It is not just to say that these emergencies 
come only once in a great while, and are therefore 
too insignificant to be reckoned. The same inju- 
diciousness which crops out in a conference of 
churches this week will reappear in a town-meeting 
next week, and in a mass-meeting the week after, 
and a teachers'-meeting the week after that. The 
same marital ignorance and inconsiderateness that 
brings on one thing will bring on another thing, 
and, except in the few cases where money and 
other ample resources enable one to secure ade- 
quate service, the wrong side, the prose side., the 
hard side of these pleasant " occasions " comes on 
the wife ; who, whether she meet it gladly, or only 
acquiescently, or reluctantly, is surely worn away 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 183 

by the attrition. However welcome society may 
be to her, she camiot encounter these odds with 
impunity, and in a majority of cases the odds are 
so heavy that she has neither time nor spirits to 
enjoy the society. All this wear an^ tear is un- 
necessary. The doctors would be better off, to 
go home without their hot suppers. There is sel- 
dom, in cities, any necessity for feeding masses of 
people, because professional feeding-houses are al- 
ways at hand, and people seldom congregate in the 
country except in summer, when each man might, 
with the smallest trouble, carry his own sandwich, 
and eat it on the grass, surrounded by his kinsfolk 
and acquaintance, with just as much hilarity as if 
he were sitting in a hard-cushioned high chair in 
a country-house parlor. Enjoyment would not be 
curtailed on the one side, and would be greatly 
promoted on the other. 

The Essex Institute has its Field-meetings, — 
its pleasant bi-weekly summer visits into the coun- 
try, and is everywhere welcome. During the morn- 
ing it roams over the fields, laying its inquisitive 
hands on every green and blossoming and creep- 
ing thing. The insects in the air, the fishes in the 
brook, the spiders in their webs, the butterfly on 
its stalk, feel instinctively that their hour is come, 
and converge spontaneously into their little tin sar- 
cophagi. At noonday hosts of heavy bas'kets un- 
lade their toothsome freight, and a merry feast is 
seasoned with Attic salt. In the afternoon, the 



184 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

farm-wagons come driving up, and the farm-horses 
lash their contented sides under the friendly trees, 
while city and country join in the grave or spark- 
ling or instructive talk which fixes the wisdom 
caught in the morning rambles. At night, young 
men and maidens, old men and children, go their 
several ways homeward, just as happy as if they had 
left behind them a dozen family-mothers wearied 
into fretfulness and illness by much serving. They 
depend upon no one for entertainment and owe no 
tiresome formalities. Go, all manner of convo- 
cations, and do likewise. 

Note, if you please, that it is not feasting which 
is objectionable. Truly or falsely, eating has al- 
ways been held to be the promoter and attendant 
of conviviality, the mouth opening the way at the 
same time to the palate and the brain. If men can 
provide feasts without laying burdens upon their 
wives, let them do it and welcome ; but if the ma- 
terial part of the feast cannot' be accomplished 
without so serious an increase of a wife's labor as 
to destroy or diminish her capacity for enjoying 
the mental part, it ought not to be attempted. 

You may say that women are as much to blame 
in this thing as men ; that the great profusion, 
variety, and elaborateness of their meals are as 
much of their own motion as of men's ; that they 
are indeed proud of and delight in showing their 
culinary resources ; that they gather sewing-cir- 
cles of their own sex without any hint, help, or 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 185 

wish from the other, and make just as great table- 
displays on such occasions as on any others that I 
have mentioned, — all of which may be very true. 
So the Doctor Southsides for many years main- 
tained that slavery must be a good thing, because 
the slaves were content in it. So the Austrian 
despots point to peasants dancing on the green- 
sward as the justification of their paternal govern- 
ment, their absolute tyranny ; as if degradation is 
any less disastrous when its victims are sunk so 
low as to be unconscious of their situation, — as if, 
indeed, that were not the lowest pit of all. How 
came women, made as truly as man in the image 
and likeness of God, to be reduced to the level of 
sacrificing time, ease, intellectual and social good, 
to the low pride of sensual display? Is it not 
the fault of those whose walk and conversation 
have made the care of eating and drinking the 
one thing needful in a woman's education, the 
chief end of her life ; who have not hesitated 
to degrade the high prerogatives of an immortal 
soul to the gratification of their own fleshly lusts ; 
who have manoeuvred so adroitly that the tickling 
of their own palates has become a more important 
and a more influential thing than the building up 
of the temple of the Holy Ghost ? Profusion and 
variety and elaborateness are of the wife's own 
motion ; but the more profuse, varied, and elabo- 
rate her display, the more you praise her. The 
more ingenuity her feast displays, the more in- 



186 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

genionsly you combine words and exhaust your 
rhetoric to express approbation and dehght. Your 
continued and conjoint praise is a far stronger in- 
centive than the clubs and thongs with which hus- 
bands have been sometimes wont to urge their 
wives to action, and which you recognize as force. 
You do not compel her, but, directly and in- 
directly, with an almost irresistible potency, for 
years and years you have enjoined it upon her, 
till your moral pressure has become as powerful as 
any display of physical strength could be. And 
having, in French fashion, set up a cook on the 
shrine of your worship, is it an extenuation of 
your offence, that women now vie with each other 
in striving to merit and attain such an apothe- 
osis ? Having caused your female children to pass 
through the kitchen-fire to the Moloch of your 
adoration, are you so illogical as to suppose that 
they will come out without any smell of fire upon 
their garments ? 

You are not to blame for the thistle-field. You 
did not make the thistles grow. No ; but you 
planted the seed, you watered the soil, you sup- 
plied all the conditions of growth ; and when the 
Lord of the vineyard cometh seeking fruit, and 
findeth only thistles, what shall he do but miser- 
ably destroy those wicked men and give the vine- 
yard unto others ? 

These are only the difficult hills over which 
you urge women to climb when you urge them 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 187 

on to marriage. Of the levels between, of the 
plains over which lies the every-day path of the 
great majority of married women, I have spoken 
with sufficient distinctness in another connection. 
Whether they are the wives of inefficient or of 
enterprising men makes small difference. The 
overwhelming probability is, that your blooming 
bride will encounter a fate similar to that of the 
prince in the fairy-tale, who, enchanted by an 
ugly old witch, was compelled to spend his life sit- 
ting inside a great iron stove ; only, instead of 
sitting comfortably inside, she will be kept in per- 
petual motion outside. Poverty or wealth, igno- 
rance or education, in the husband, may affect the 
quality, but scarcely the quantity, of the wife's 
work. Hard, grinding, depressing toil is not the 
peculiar lot of the poor housewife. It is the ''pro- 
tection," the "cherishing," which men "well to 
do in the world " award their wives, — the thriving 
farmers, the butchers, the blacksmiths, who " get a 
good living," and perhaps have " money at inter- 
est." What advantageth it a woman to be the wife 
of a " rising man " ? He rises by reading, by rea- 
soning, by attention to his business, by intercourse 
with intelligent people, by journeys, by constant 
growth, and constant contact with stimulating 
circumstances ; but she is tied down by the 
endless details of housekeeping and the nursery. 
Growth, intelligence, and rising in the w^orld are 
not for her. His increasing business and fair po- 



188 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

litical prospects only bring more cares to her, and 
bring them long before any permanent increase of 
income justifies, or can command, anything approxi- 
mating to adequate assistance in the home depart- 
ment. And his increase of business, his widening 
circle of acquaintance, are sure to take him more 
away from home, to absorb more of his time 
and his thoughts, and so not only create heavier 
burdens, but call to other tasks the strength that 
ought to bear them. The selfsame circumstan- 
ces which raise the man depress the woman. If 
he does not make especial effort to upbear her 
with himself, the result will presently be, that, 
while he rides on the crest of the wave, she is en- 
gulfed in the trough of the sea. There is small 
reason to suppose he will make the effort. It is 
the men in '' comfortable circumstances," shrewd, 
with an eye to the main chance, who often sin most 
deeply in this respect. Their main chance does 
not include husbandly love, wifely repose. It is a 
part of their "business talent" to turn their wives 
to account just as they turn everything else. She 
is a partner in the concern. She is a part of the 
stock in trade. She is one of the stepping-stones 
to eminence or competence. All that she can 
earn or save, all the labor or supervision that can 
be wrested from her, is so much added to the 
working capital ; and so long as she does not lose 
her health, so long as she remains in good work- 
ing order, they never suspect that anything is 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 189 

wrong. If she were not doing the house-work or 
taking care of the children, she would not be do- 
ing anything that would bring in money, or nearly 
so much money, as her economy and foresight 
save. Even if she does lose her health, her hus- 
band scarcely so much as thinks of laying the sin 
at his own door. It was not hard work or low 
spirits, it was rheumatism or slow fever, that 
brought her down. If her life lapses away, and 
she descends into the grave before she has lived 
out half her days, her sorrowing husband lays it to 
the account of a mysterious Providence, and — 
" the world is all before him where to choose." 

Have I drawn a cold, harsh picture? The cold- 
ness and harshness are not alone in the drawing. 
It spreads before you every day and all around 
you : a picture whose figures throb with hidden 
hfe, — a very tableau vivant. What else can be ex- 
pected from our social principles ? What kind of 
husbands do you look for in men who have set 
their affections on fortune or fame ? What kind of 
husbands can a society turn out that publicly and 
shamelessly avows the preservation and increase 
of property to be the object of marriage ? A peo- 
ple's practice is sometimes, but very rarely, better 
than its principles. If wealth or position be the 
chief goal of a man's ambition, he only acts con- 
sistently in harnessing his wife along with all his 
other powers and possessions to his chariot. Look- 
ing at it dispassionately, freed from the glamour 



190 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

which popular opinion throws upon our eyes, it 
would seem to be better for a woman to marry 
the Grand Turk, since a friendly bowstring might 
put a period to her trouble, or she might hope to 
be tied up in a sack and safely and quietly de- 
posited in the Bosphorus ; while in America there 
is no such possibility. You must live on to the 
end, come it never so tardily. 

And how far extends even so much protection 
as this, — the protection which consists in appro- 
priating a woman's time and strength, and de- 
teriorating both her mind and body by incessant, 
chiefly menial, and not unfrequently repulsive toil, 
and giving her in return — food, clothing, and 
shelter, which, if female labor were justly paid, 
she could earn bv one fourth of the effort, and 
which is often bestowed with more or less reluc- 
tance and unpleasant conditioning, as a favor rather 
than a right? Look around upon all the people 
whose circumstances you know, and see if the 
number of families is small whose support depends 
partly upon the mother ? Do you know any fam- 
ilies which depend chiefly or entirely upon the 
mother ? Do you know any, where the husbands 
are invalids, and have laid by nothing for a rainy 
day ? any, where the husbands are lazy and in- 
efficient, and perhaps intemperate, and neglect to 
provide for their families ? any, where they have 
been unfortunate and lost all, and only the moth- 
er's courage and energy supply deficiency ? any, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 191 

where the husband has died insolvent, and the 
survivor struggles single-handed against the tide ? 
any, where the husband's death was the lifting of 
an incubus, which removed, the family seemed at 
once to be prosperous and happy ? Do you ever 
see a woman, with a family of children and a hus- 
band, taking the entire care of her household, and, 
besides this, earning a little money at knitting or 
sewing or washing ? Judging from my own ob- 
servation, setting aside inability from disease, where 
you find one woman who is a dead-weight upon 
her energetic husband, you will find seven men 
who are a dead-weight upon their energetic wives. 
But all this is "protection." All this is the 
superior sex cherishing the inferior ; the chival- 
rous sex defending the helpless ; the strong caring 
for the delicate ; the able providing for the de- 
pendent. To all this you urge women when you 
goad them on to marriage. And you do well to 
apply your goad. You are wise in your genera- 
tion, when you create such an overwhelming out- 
side pressure ; without it, women would not go 
down quick into the pit. Left to their own un- 
prejudiced reason, to their own clear eyes and 
rapid and just conclusions, they would not choose 
the greatest of all evils, — a living death. In vain 
is the net spread in the sight of any bird. If you 
cannot help this state of things, where is your 
logic ? If you can help it, where is your con- 
science ? 



XI, 




OU will say that I have left the mam 
element out of the calculation ; that I 
have looked at marriage only in respect 
of its material combinations, in which 
light it appears but as a body without the soul ; 
whereas, in its real wholeness it is penetrated by 
love which transforms all common scenes, persons, 
and duties "into something rich and strange." 
But will truth permit one to view it otherwise ? 
Is marriage, as we see it practically carried out, 
penetrated with this vivifying and spiritualizing 
element ? Love, indeed, calls nothing common or . 
unclean ; but, as a matter of homely fact, is there 
love enough in ordinary housekeeping to keep it 
sweet ? The first year or two runs well, but how 
much living love survives the first olympiad ? 
How much outlasts a decade ? In marriages 
openly mercenary, we do not count on finding af- 
fection ; where they are entered into honestly, are 
they followed by different results ? If a w^oman 
marries for money, or station, or respectability, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 193 

she may compass her ends, but if she marries for 
love, are not the odds against her ? Motive aflfects 
her character, but scarcely her fate. Her love 
will be wasted on a thankless heart ; she may con- 
sider herself fortunate if it be not trampled under a 
brutal, or perhaps only a heedless foot. Love in 
marriage! Marriage is the grave of love. Look 
at best for association, habit, support, tranquiUity, 
freedom from outside compassion, in marriage, but 
do not look for love. 

On such a topic as this the truth must be felt 
rather than proved, yet authority is not wanting. 
So eminent and trustworthy a man as Paley, in 
his Moral and Political Philosophy, having spoken 
of the necessity that a man and wife should make 
mutual concession, adds : ''A man and woman 
in love with each other do this insensibly ; but 
love is neither general nor durable ; and where 
that is wanting, no lessons of duty, no delicacy 
of sentiment, will go half so far with the gen- 
erality of mankind as this one intelligible reflec- 
tion, that they must each make the best of their 
bargain." 

This work was published in 1785. We have 
all studied it at school, under the guidance of men 
and women, married and single. Its positions 
have been variously, frequently, and sometimes 
successfully assailed. But I have never heard a 
whisper breathed or seen a line written impugning 
his statement, that love is neither general nor 

9 M 



194 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

durable. This statement is not made under the 
influence of passion, or to compass any purpose, 
but is simply the basis of an argument, — a gen- 
eral truth, as if he should say that man is en- 
dowed with a conscience. 

In that most fascinating of biographies, the 
'' Memoirs of Frederic Perthes," written by his 
son, and published in Edinburgh, we have a very 
charming picture of home life. Perthes, a man 
known throughout Germany, the intimate friend 
of her most distinguished scholars and statesmen, 
is the husband of Caroline, a woman whose char- 
acter, indirectly but minutely and impressively 
portrayed in her husband's memoirs, seems to be 
without flaw. Fresh, simple, truthful, sensible, 
sympathetic, affectionate, educated, and accom- 
plished, the qualities of her head and heart alike 
command something deeper than respect. As 
daughter, wife, mother, and woman she is equally 
admirable. Her letters to her husband and her 
children are as full of wisdom as of love. Every- 
where she shines white and clear and pure as the 
moon, yet warm, beneficent, and bountiful as the 
sun. It is only as the wife of Perthes that we 
know her ; but, magnificent as Perthes unquestion- 
ably was, he pales before the most beautiful, most 
gracious, most womanly woman whom he won to 
his heart and home. No suspicion of her own 
exceeding excellence ever seems to have dawned 
upon her own mind. Her Perthes was the object 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 195 

of her deep respect and her lasting love. This 
fact of itself shows that he must have been a man 
of extraordinary conjugal merit. His relations to 
her must have been of a very rare delicacy. He 
must have bestowed an attention and been capable 
of an appreciation far beyond the ordinary meas- 
ure, or such a w^oman as his wife could not have 
written after several years of marriage, ''The old 
song is every morning new, that, if possible, I 
love Perthes still better than the day before." If 
one may not find satisfaction in the contemplation 
of a marriage passed under circumstances so favor- 
ing, where shall he look for satisfaction ? Never- 
theless, listen to a story lightly told by her son, the 
biographer, the learned law-professor of the world- 
renowned Bonn, — told as the old prophets are 
supposed to have frequently uttered their prophe- 
cies, with but the most vague and imperfect com- 
prehension of what it was that they were saying. 

" With her lively fancy, and a heart ever seek- 
ing sympathy, she felt it to be hard that Perthes, 
laden with cares, business, and interests of all kinds, 
could devote so little time to her and the children. 
* My hope becomes every day less that Perthes will 
be able to make any such arrangement of his time 
as will leave a few quiet hours for me and the chil- 
dren. There is nothing that I can do but to love 
him, and to bear him ever in my heart, till it shall 
please God to bring us together to some region 
where we shall no longer need house or housekeep- 



196 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

ing, and where there are neither bills to be paid 
nor books to be kept. Perthes feels it a heavy- 
trial, but he keeps up his spirits, and for this I 
thank God.' To these and kindred feelings which 
she had long cherished in her heart Caroline now 
gave expression in letters which she wrote to 
Perthes during his absence. After eighteen years 
of trial and vicissitude, her affection for her hus- 
band had retained all its youthful freshness ; life 
and love had not become merely habitual, they 
remained fresh and spontaneous as in the bride. 
She always gave free utterance to her feelings, in 
a manner at once unrestrained and characteristic, 
and felt deeply when Perthes, as a husband, ad- 
dressed her otherwise than he had done as a bride- 
groom. During Perthes's detention for some weeks 
in Leipsic, this state of feeling found expression on 
both sides, half in jest and half in earnest. ' You 
indeed renounced all sensibility for this year, be- 
cause of your many occupations,' wrote Caroline a 
few days after her husband's departure ; ' but I, 
for my part, when I write to you, cannot do so 
without deep feeling ; for the thought of you ex- 
cites all the sensibility of which my heart is capa- 
ble. Not a line have I yet received. Tell me, is 
it not rather hard that you did not write me from 
Brunswick ? At least I thought so, and felt very 
much that your companion G. should have written 
to his newly-married wife, and you not to me. It 
is the first time- you have ever gone on a journey 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 197 

without writing to me from your first resting-place. 
I have been reading over your earlier letters to 
find satisfaction to myself, in some measure at least, 
but it has been a mixed pleasure. Last year, at 
Blankenese, you promised me many happy hours 
of mutual companionship. I have not yet had 
them ; and yet you owe many such to me, — yes, 
you do indeed.' Perthes answered : ' You write, 
telling me that I have renounced all sensibility for 
this year. This is not true, my dearest heart; 
it is quite otherwise. I think that, after so many 
years of mutual interchange of feeling and of 
thought, and when people understand each other 
thoroughly, there is an end of all those little ten- 
dernesses of expression, which represent a relation- 
ship that is still piquant because new. Be content 
with me, dear child, we understand each other. I 
did not write to you from Brunswick, because we 
passed through quickly. Moreover, it is not fair 
to compare me with my companion, the bridegroom ; 
youth has its features, and so also has middle age. 
It would be absurd, indeed, were I now to be look- 
ing by moonlight under the trees and among the 
clouds for young maidens, as I did twenty years 
ago, or were to imagine young ladies to be angels. 
Nor would it become ^ou any better if you were 
to be dancing a gallopade, or clambering up trees in 
fits of love enthusiasm. We should not find fault 
with our having grown older : only be satisfied, 
give God the praise, and exercise patience and for- 
bearance with me.' " 



198 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

» 

Can anything be more natural than Caroline's 
gentle remonstrance ? Can anything be more 
hopeless than Perthes's shuffling reply ? Lonely 
wife, languishing for a draught of the olden tender- 
ness, and with nothing to medicine her weariness 
but the information that it had all come to an end ; 
reaching out for a little of the love that was her 
life, and met by the assertion that climbing trees 
was not becoming to a woman of her age ! It is 
good to know that she replied with spirit, though 
still with no diminution of her immeasurable love. 
" Your last letter is indeed a strange one. I must 
again say, that my affection knows neither youth 
nor age, and is eternal. I can detect no change, 
except that I now know what formerly I only hoped 
and believed. I never took you for an angel, nor 
do I now take you for the reverse ; neither did I 
ever beguile you by assuming an angel's form or 
angelic manners. I never danced the gallopade, 
or climbed trees, and am now exactly what I was 
then, only rather older ; and you must take me as 
I am, my Perthes ; — in one word, love me, and 
tell me so sometimes, and that is all I want." 

Men, you to whose keeping a woman's heart 
is intrusted, can you hear that simple prayer, — 
*' Love me, and tell me so sometimes, and that 
is all I want " ? 

Perthes, shamed out of his worldliness into at 
least an attempt at sympathy, replies:, "Your 
answer was just 'what it ought to have been ; only 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 199 

don't forget that my inward love for you is as eter- 
nal as yours is for me ; but I have so many things 
to think of." 

Undoubtedly, after all his evasion, the truth 
came out at last, — ''I have so many things to think 
of," It was the best excuse he could offer, and it 
is a great pity he had not brought it forward in 
the beginning. He had suffered the cares of this 
world and the deceitfulness of business to choke 
his love ; but it would have been far more honor- 
able to himself and far more comfortable to his 
wife to confess it frankly, than to afSrm his in- 
difference and neglect to be the natural course of 
events. A love overgrown with weeds may be 
revived, but for a love lost by natural decay 
there is n(^ resurrection. "I did not write to 
you from Brunswick, because we passed through 
quickly." Did he pass through any more quickly 
than his companion G., who found time to write 
to his newly-married wife ? '' We understand 
each other thoroughly, and therefore there is an 
end of all those little tendernesses of expression " ; 
but there was no end of them on Caroline's part. 
Her understanding was not less thorough than 
his, yet her love craved expression. "My in- 
ward love for you is as eternal as yours for me"; 
yet just before he had been pleading his increasing 
years as an excuse for his diminishing tenderness, 
while Caroline's stanch heart declared, " My affec- 
tion knows neither youth nor age, and is eternal. 



200 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

I can detect no change, except that I now know 
what formerly I only hoped and believed." Short- 
ly afterwards, while spending a summer at Wands- 
beeh for her health, almost daily letters were ex- 
changed between herself and her husband. " While 
those of Perthes were devoted to warnings and en- 
treaties to take care of her health, (a cheap sub- 
stitute for affection which Perthes was not alone 
in employing,) the few lines in which Caroline 
was wont to reply were full of expressions of love, 
and of sorrow on account of their necessarj^ sepa- 
ration. ' I am seated in the garden,' she writes, 
' and all my merry little birds are around me. I 
let the sun shine upon me, to make me well if he 
can. God grant it ! if it only be so far as to en- 
able me to discharge my duties to my family.' — 
' I hope, my dear Perthes, that you will again have 
pleasure in me ; the waters seem really to do me 
good. Come to-morrow, only not too late. My 
very soul longs for you.' — ' You shall be thanked 
for the delightful hours that I enjoyed with you 
yesterday,' she writes, after a short visit to Ham- 
burg, ' and for the sight of your dear, kind face, 
as I got out of the carriage.'- — ' I only live w^here 
you are with me. Send Matthias to me, if it does 
not interfere with his lessons : if I cannot have the 
father, I must put up with the son.' — -' The chil- 
dren enjoy their freedom, and are my joy and de- 
light But you, dear old father ! you, too, 

are my joy and delight. Let me have a little let- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 201 

ter ; I cannot help longing for one, and will read 
it, when I get it, ten times over.' — 'It is eighteen 
years to-day since I wrote you the last letter be- 
fore our marriage, and sent you my first request 
about the little black cross. I have asked for many 
things in the eighteen years that have passed since 
then, dear Perthes, and what shall I ask to-day ? 
You can tell, for you know me well, and know 
that I have never said an untrue word to you. 
Only you cannot quite know my indescribable af- 
fection, for it is infinite. Perthes, my heart is full 
of joy and sadness, — would that you were here ! 
This day eighteen years ago I did not long for 
you more fervently or more ardently than now. 
I thank God continually for everything. I am 
and remain yours in time, and, though I know not 
how, for eternity, too ! Be in a very good hu- 
mor, when you come to-morrow. Affection is 
certainly the greatest wonder in heaven or on 
earth, and the only thing that I can represent to 
myself as insatiable throughout eternity.' " 

Do these extracts indicate that many years of 
mutual interchange of feeling and thought had 
put an end to little tendernesses of expression ? 
Does his love seem as eternal as hers ? It is true 
that he falls back upon " inward " love ; but we 
only know saints in their bodies. Inward love 
that denies outward manifestation may satisfy men, 
but it will never pass current with women. Little 
children, who have been idle during their study- 

9=^ 



202 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

hour, will often excuse their failures by declaring 
that they ''know, but cannot think." No teacher, 
however, is imposed on. A scholar that does not 
know his lesson well enough to recite it, does not 
know it at all. A love that does not, in one way or 
another, express itself sufficiently to satisfy the 
object of its love, is not love. To satisfy the ohject 
of its love, I say, for love can never satisfy itself. 
It was not love that Perthes's letter contained, but 
an apology for its absence. 

What men love is the comforts of the married 
state, not the person who provides them, — wifely 
duties rather than the wife. A man enjoys his 
home. He likes the cheery fireside, the dressing- 
gown' and slippers, the bright tea-urn and the 
brighter eyes behind it. He likes to see boys and 
girls growing up around him, bearing his name 
and inheriting his qualities. He likes to have his 
clothes laid ready to his hand, stockings in their 
integrity, buttons firm in their places, meals pleas- 
ant, prompt, yet frugal. He likes a servant such as 
money cannot hire, — attentive, affectionate, spon- 
taneous, devoted, and trustworthy. He likes very 
much the greatest comfort for the smallest outlay, 
and certainly he likes to be loved. His love runs 
in the current of his likings, and is speedily indis- 
tinguishable from them ; but does he love the 
woman who is his wife ? Would he say to her, as 
poor Tom sadly pleaded in " A Half-Life and Half 
a Life," — '' But I love you true, and if you can only 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 203 

fancy me, I '11 work so hard that you 11 be able to 
keep a hired girl and have all your time for read- 
ing and going about the woods, as you like to do " ? 
Would he say, as Von Fink said to Lenore, — " You 
will have no need to make my shirts, and if you 
don't like account-keeping, why let it alone " ? 
Listen, for it is good to know that a man has lived 
and written who did not look for his domestic 
happiness entirely in a bread-pan and a w^ork- 
basket. "Just as you are, Lenore, — resolute, 
bold, a little passionate devil, — just so will I have 
you remain. We have been companions in arms, 

and so we shall continue to be Were you 

not my heart's desire, were you a man, I should 
like to have you for my life's companion ; so, 
Lenore, you will be to me not only a beloved 
wife, but a courageous friend, the confidante of all 
my plans, my best and truest comrade." 

Lenore shook her head ; '' I ought to be your 
housewife," sighed she (the new love not yet hav- 
ing quite purged out the old leaven). 

Fink — (but no matter what Fink did. We are 
concerned now only with what he said.) '' Be 
content, sweetheart," said he, tenderly, " and 
make up your mind to it. We have been to- 
gether in a fire strong enough to bring love to 
maturity, and we know each other thoroughly. 
Between ourselves, we shall have many a storm 
in our house. I am no easy-going companion, at 
least for a woman, and you will very soon find 



204 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

that will of yours again, the loss of which you are 
now lamenting. Be at rest, darling, you shall be 
as headstrong as of yore ; you need not distress 
yourself on that account ; so you may prepare for 
a few storms, but for hearty love and merry life 
as well." Would your latter-day lover sign such 
articles of agreement on his marriage-day ? 

Of course he would not. The shirts and the 
account-keeping are what he marries for, and it 
would be a manifest absurdity to annul the con- 
clusion of the whole matter. It is not a question 
what women like to do ; they must bake and brew 
and make and mend, whether th^y like it or not. 
Men do not marry for the purpose of making 
women happy, but to make themselves happy. 
A girl looks forward in her marriage to what she 
will do for her husband's happiness. A man, to 
what he will enjoy through his wife's ministrations. 
*'He needs a wife," say the good women who 
were born and bred in these opinions and do not 
suspect their grossness. 

'' It is a grand good match ; I don't know any- 
body that needs a wife more than he," said one of 
these at a little gathering, speaking of a recent 
marriage. 

''Why?" innocently questioned another wo- 
man, who was supposed to have somewhat pecu- 
liar views concerning these things. 

" O, you never want anybody to marry ! " 
burst out a chorus of voices, — which was surely 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 205 

a very broad inference from one narrow monosyl- 
lable. 

" But why does he need a wife ? " persisted the 
questioner. 

" For sympathy and companionship," trium- 
phantly replied the first woman, knowing that 
to such motives her interlocutor could take no 
exception. But a third woman, not knowing that 
anything lay behind these questions and answers, 
and feehng that the original position was but 
feebly maintained by such unsubstantial things as 
sympathy and companionship, being also a near 
neighbor of the person in question, and acquainted 
with the facts, proceeded to strengthen the case 
by adding, '' Well, he was all alone, and he wa' n't 
very well, and he -was taken sick one night and 
could n't get anybody to take care of him." 

'^ But why not hire a nurse ? " 

" Well he did, and she was very good ; but she 
wouldn't do his washing." 

Only wait long enough, and you are tolerably 
sure to get the truth at last. It was not sympathy 
and companionship, after all, that the man wanted : 
it was his washing ! 

You see a most unconscious, but irrefragable 
testimony concerning the relations which are 
deemed proper between a man and his wife in the 
very common use of the phrase, '' kind husband." 
It is often employed in praise of the living and in 
eulogy of the dead. Compared with a cruel hus- 



206 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

band, I suppose a kind husband is the more toler- 
able ; *but compared with a true husband, there is 
no such thing as a kind husband. You are kind 
to animals, to beggars, to the beetle that you step 
out of your path to avoid treading on. One may 
be kind to people who have no claims upon him, 
but he is not kind to his wife. He does not stand 
towards her in any relation that makes kindness 
possible. He can no more be kind to his wife than 
he can be to himself. His wife is not his inferior, 
to be condescended to, but his treasure to be cher- 
ished, his friend to be loved, his adviser to be de- 
ferred to. It is an insult to a woman for her hus- 
band to assume, or for his biographer to assume 
for him, that he could be kind to her. Did you 
ever hear a woman praised for being kind to her 
husband ? Did you ever hear an obituary declare 
a woman to be a dutiful daughter, a kind wife, a 
faithful mother ? You may be sure the phrase is 
never used by any one who has a just idea of what 
marriage ought to be. 

If love cannot outlast a few years of life, it is 
idle to lament that it is so surely quenched by 
death. ( Absence cannot be blamed for dissipating 
a love that has been already conquered by pres- 
ence.) Nevertheless, in the alacrity with which 
one is off with the old love and on with the new 
may be read the shallowness, the flimsiness, the 
earthliness, of that which passes for the deepest, 
the most lasting, and the most divine. Weary 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 207 

feet, aching brow, and disappointed heart are at 
rest ; or a vigorous young life is smitten before its 
heyday was clouded ; or the ripened sheaf is gar- 
nered at the harvest-time ; but no proprieties, no 
shock of premature loss, nor the " late remorse of 
love," avails to make the impression indelible. 
The dead past may bury its dead out of sight; 
the resurrection may adjust its own perplexities ; 
but in this world there must be good cheer. The 
funeral baked meats shall coldly furnish forth the 
marriage-table. La Heine est morte : Viva la 
Heine ! And when the loving wife is gone away 
from the heart that entertained its angel unawares, 
people will tell you with a sober face how '' beauti- 
fully he bears it ! " " perfectly resigned! " '' Chris- 
tian calmness ! " '' kiss the rod ! " It were to be 
wished he did not bear it quite so beautifully. 
When a wife is prematurely torn from her home, 
the only proper attitude for her husband is to sit 
in sackcloth and ashes. It is fit that he should 
be stricken to the dust. It is not becoming for 
him to indulge in pious reflections. Ill-timed 
resio;nation is a breach of morals. He is not to be 
supposed capable of a lasting fidelity, but he may 
be expected to be temporarily stunned by the blow. 
It would be more decorous for him to follow the 
example of the powerful and wealthy king in the 
fairy-tale, who, having lost his wife, was so in- 
consolable that he shut himself up for eight 
entire days in a little room, where he spent his 



208 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

time chiefly in knocking his head against the 
wall! 

It is pitiful to see a strong man tottering into a 
wrong path from sheer lack of strength to walk in 
the right one, which yet he does not lack clear 
vision to see. But the spectacle may be profitable 
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion in righteousness. Perhaps no more faithful 
and graphic presentation of the diplomacy that is 
employed in compassing a second marriage can be 
given than is found in the proceedings of Perthes. 
When, after twenty-four years of married life, his 
wife, the mother of his ten children, left him, he 
repaired to Gotha and lived three years in the 
family of a married daughter. In an early stage 
of his bereavement he writes of his loneliness, and 
mentions, but almost with repugnance, certainly 
with no apparent intention of entering it, or any 
intimation of a possibility of receiving joy from it, 
" a new wedlock." Nevertheless, the thought is 
there. His daughter's sister-in-law, a widow of 
thirty years, and mother of four children, lives next 
door. Presently comes down his mother-in-law to 
pay a visit. '' She was much concerned about 
Perthes's situation, and one day, while they were 
walking in the orangery, expressed herself openly 
to him. She told him that he was no more a master 
of his own house, that soon his younger children 
would be leaving him, and that his strong health 
gave promise of a long life yet to come ; that for 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 209 

him solitude was not good, that he could not bear 
it, and consequently that he ought not to put off 
choosing a companion for the remainder of his 
life." All of which of course came to him with 
the freshness of entire novelty. But immediately we 
find that at these words " the thought of Charlotte 
shot like lightning through his soul." So it seems 
that he had already outstripped his mother-in-law. 
She dealt only in generals, but he had advanced 
to particulars. However, " he made no reply, but 
he had a hard battle to fight with himself from 
that time forth. In September he communicated 
to his mother-in-law the jpros and cons which 
agitated him so much, but without giving her to 
understand that it was no longer the subject of 
marriage in general, but of one marriage in partic- 
ular, which now disquieted him. After stating 
the outward and inward circumstances, which 
made a second marriage advisable in his case, he 
goes on to say : ' I am quite certain that Caroline 
foresaw, from her knowledge of my character and 
temperament, a second marriage for me, and I am 
equally certain that no new union could ever dis- 
turb my spirit's abiding union with her. [It is to 
be hoped that Charlotte was duly made acquainted 
with this fact.] My inner life is filled with her 
memory, and will be so till my latest day ; but I 
must own that this is possible only while I incor- 
porate in thought her happy soul, and think of her 
as a human being, still sharing my earthly ex- 

N 



210 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

istence, still taking interest in all I do ; and I can- 
not disguise from myself, while viewing her under 
this aspect, that my dear Caroline would prefer 
my living on alone, satisfied with her memory. 
Again, there can be no doubt that Holy Scripture, 
although permitting a second marriage, does so on 
account of the hardness of our hearts. The civil 
law contains no prohibition either, and yet there 
has always existed a social prejudice against such 
a marriage, and youth, whose ideal is always fresh 
and fair, and women who are always young in 
soul, look with secret disgust upon it. I know, 
too, that my remaining alone would be, not only 
with reference to others, but in itself, the worthier 
course ; but, on the other hand, I know it would 
be so in reality only if this worthiness were not 
assumed for the purpose of appearing in a false 
light to myself, to other men, and perhaps even 
before God, or for the purpose of cloaking selfish- 
ness under the guise of fidelity to the departed.' 
It was not, however, by answering this question, 
nor by reflecting upon the lawfulness of second 
marriages in general, that Perthes's irresolution 
was subdued, but by an increasing attachment to 
the lady whose character had attracted him." 

Very honorable appears Perthes here, in that he 
argues the case against himself with fulness and 
frankness,, revealing to himself without disguise 
the weakness under which he finally falls, and 
conscious all the while that it is a weakness. He 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. ' 211 

does not attempt to hide the fact that Carohne 
would have preferred to Kve alone in his memory, 
and he falls back on his only defensible ground, — 
the hardness of his heart. Confession is forgive- 
ness. Let him pass on to the new bride, and the 
second family of eleven children that will spring 
up around them. 

But there are men, and women too, — there are 
always women enough to echo men's o'^inions, — 
who assume that the spirit of the departed will be 
delighted in her heavenly abode to know that the 
husband decides not to spend his life in solitude. 
Some women indeed show the last infirmity of* 
noble minds by recommending their husbands to 
take a second wife, although it seems a pity to 
waste one's last breath in bestowing advice which 
is so entirely superfluous. If a man will marry, 
let him marry, but let no patient Griselda "gin 
the hous to dight" for the "newe lady." If a 
man will marry, let him marry, but let him not 
offer the world an apology for the act. The 
apology is itself an accusation ; a dishonor to both 
wives instead of one. He knows his own motives 
and emotions. If they are upright and sufficient, 
it is no matter what people say about him ; he 
and the other person immediately concerned should 
be so self-satisfied as to be indifferent to outside 
comment. If they are not upright and sufficient, 
attempting to make them appear so is an additional 
offence. 



212 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

I have said on this subject more than I intended. 
I meant only to state a fact clearly enough to use 
it. The rest " whistled itself." Practically, I do 
not know that I have any quarrel with any mar- 
riage that is real, whether it come after the first 
or fiftieth attempt. Judging from general obser- 
vation, I should suppose that most people might 
marry half a dozen times, and not be completely 
married then. ] 

If, as Perthes seems to have thought, all this is 
the natural course of events, why do you make all 
womanly honor and happiness converge in the one 
focus of marriage, unless like a Mussulman you 
believe that on such condition alone can women 
aspire to immortality ? But even then it w^ould 
be a hard bargain. Immortality is dearly bought 
at the price of immorality. When all other argu- 
ments fail, and you would mount to your sublimest 
heights of moral elevation, you assure a woman 
that, no matter how lofty her life may be, nor how 
deep her satisfaction may seem, if she fails of mar- 
riage she fails of the highest development, the 
deepest experience, the greatest benefit. You tell 
her that she misses somewhat which Heaven itself 
cannot supply. But, on the other hand, you have 
previously shown that marriage is but a temporary 
arrangement, an entirely mundane affair. Love 
belongs as completely to this world as houses and 
barns, — is in fact rather supplementary to them, 
— - especially to the house. It is of the body, and 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 213 

not of the spirit ; for the spirit lives forever, but 
when the body dies, love dies also. There are 
no claims beyond the grave. Nay, it does not 
reach to the grave. The delight, the spontaneity, 
the satisfaction, the keenness, all die out before the 
person dies. The pulp shrivels, and only a wrinkled 
skin of habit remains. But a woman is immortal. 
Can a mortal love satisfy an immortal heart? Is it 
possible that an undying soul must find its strongest 
development in a dying love ? Does a creature 
of the skies incur an irreparable loss, miss an ir- 
reclaimable jewel, suffer an incurable wound, when 
it loses, or misses, or suffers anything which is but 
of the earth earthy ? Can anything finite be in- 
dispensable to an infinite life ? 

Again, if this accession of toil, and this diminu- 
tion and decay of perceptible love, and this falling 
back on inward love, is the natural course of 
events, why not say so in the beginning ? If in- 
ward love be satisfactory at one time, why not at 
another, as well before marriage as after ? Why, 
when a man has once made and received afiidavit 
of love, should he not be content, and neither proffer 
nor demand manifestations ? Let men be satisfied 
with inward love during courtship, and the honey- 
moon, if inward love is so all-sufficient. Not in 
the least. Men are not one tenth part so capable 
of inward love as women, — I mean jo£ an inward 
love without outward expression. Their inward 
love becomes outward love almost as soon as it 



214 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

becomes love at all. They are ten times more 
tumultuous, more demonstrative, more phenomenal^ 
than women. They are as impatient as children, 
and more unreasonable. They cannot, or they 
will not, brook delay, suspense, refusal. Women 
accept all these drawbacks as a part of the pro- 
gramme, and with "the endurance that outwearies 
WTong," while men fiercely, if vainly, kick against 
the pricks and talk about inward love ! 

And if the true object of marriage be to help 
accumulate or frugally to manage a fortune, to cook 
dinners, and act as a sewing-machine, " warranted 
not to ravel," say that frankly also in the beginning. 
Tell women plainly what you want of them. Do 
not lure them into your service under false pre- 
tences. Do not wait till they are irrevocably fas- 
tened to you, and then lay on them the burdens of 
labor and take away the supports of love, and lecture 
them into acquiescence through the newspapers. 
While there is yet left to them a freedom of 
choice, make them fully acquainted with the cir- 
cumstances of the case, that they may be able to 
choose intelligently. When one does not expect 
much, one is not disappointed at receiving little. 
One is not chilled at heart by snow in winter. It 
is walking over sunny Southern lands, and finding 
frosts when you looked for flowers, that freezes the 
fountains of life. If you do not overwhelm a 
woman with your protestations, if you do not lure 
her to your heart by presenting yourself to her 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 215 

and praying her to be to you friend, comrade, and 
lover, when what you really want is cook, laun- 
dress, and housekeeper, she will at least know what 
is before her. But do not swear to her eternal 
fidelity, knowing that, as soon as you thoroughly 
understand each other, there will be an end of all 
little tendernesses of expression. Do not span her 
with a rainbow, and spread diamond-dust beneath 
her feet, knowing all the while that a very little 
time will bring for the one but a cold, penetrat- 
ing rain, and will change the other into coarse, 
sharp pebbles that shall bruise her tender feet. 
Change the formula of your marriage vows, and 
instead of promising to love, honor, and cherish 
till death you do part, promise to do it only till 
you understand her thoroughly, and then to make 
the best of the bargain ! 

If we were forced to believe that these right- 
hand fallings-off and left-hand defections were in- 
deed the legitimate workings of the human heart, 
the natural history of mankind, then should we be 
forced to believe that this world is a stupendous 
failure, and the sooner it is burned up the better. 
We should be forced to believe in the thorough 
degradation and destructibility of both mind and 
matter. For the essence of value is durability. 
A soap-bubble is as beautiful as a pearl and as bril- 
liant as a diamond ; for what is called practical 
service, for warmth, or shelter, or sustenance, one 
is quite as good as another. What makes their 



216 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

different worth is, that the soap-bubble yields up 
its lovely life to the first molecule that sails 
through the air to solicit it, while the gems out- 
last a thousand years. But if life is a soap- 
bubble, and not a pearl, shall a woman sell all 
that she has and buy it ? What advantageth 
the possession of a happiness which melts in the 
grasp, — which is satisfactory only for the short 
time that it is novel ? Who would care to enter 
a path of roses, knowing that a few steps will take 
him into a vast and barren desert, whence escape 
is impossible ? If this is real life, let us rather 
pitch our tents in fairy-land; for then, when the 
Prince is at last restored to his true manly form 
and his rightful throne, and united to the beauti- 
ful, constant Princess, we invariably find, not only 
that their happiness was quite inexpressible, but 
it lasted to the end of their lives. 

If we are to believe such propositions, we might 
as well call ourselves infidels, and have done with 
it. To deny the existence of love takes away no 
more hope from humanity than to deny the im- 
mortality of love. It is no worse to take away life 
from the soul than to give it a life which is but a 
protracted death. To make a distinction between 
earthly and heavenly love hardly affects the case. 
The direction of love is not love. All love is 
heavenly, — " bright effluence of bright essence 
increate." If a man gives himself to the pursuit of 
unworthy objects, or to the indulgence of unhal- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 217 

lowed pleasures, a pure name need not be dragged 
down into the mire that his error may have a 
seemly christening. If that is love w^hich fades 
out long before its object ; if, when its object dis- 
appears behind the veil love rightly returns to 
earth, then are we of all creatures most miserable ; 
for we abnegate a future. We thought it had 
been he which should have redeemed Israel ; but 
thou shalt return unto the ground, for out of it 
wast thou taken. Dust art thou, O love, and unto 
dust shalt thou return. 

Nay, let us have falsehood rather than truth, if 
this be truth. But this cannot be truth. Love 
sets up his ladder on the earth, but the top of it 
reaches unto heaven, and if the eye be clear and 
the heart pure, the angels of God shall be seen 
ascending and descending on it. The fashion of 
this world passeth away, 

" But love strikes one hour, — Love." 

Hear a woman's voice mingling now with 
angels' voices, — the voice of a woman whose 
pathway to the skies was a line of light shining 
still more and more unto the perfect day. 

" I classed, appraising once, 
Earth's lamentable sounds : the welladay, 

The jarring yea and nay. 
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay, 
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller; 

But all did leaven the air 
10 



218 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

With a less bitter leaven of sure despair 
Than these words, — ' I loved once.' 

" And who saith, « I loved once ' ? 
Not angels, whose clear eyes love, love foresee, 

Love through eternity. 
Who by To Love do apprehend To Be. 
Not God, called Love, his noble crown-name, casting 

A light too broad for blasting ! 
The great God, changing not from everlasting, 

Saith never, ' I loved once.' 

" Nor ever the ' Loved once ' 
Dost THOU say, Victim- Christ, misprised friend ! 

The cross and curse may rend ; 
But, having loved. Thou lovest to the end ! 
It is man's saying, — man's. Too weak to move 

One sphered star above, 
Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love 

With his No More and Once. 

^' Say never, ye loved once ! 
God is too near above, the grave below, 

And all our moments go 
Too quickly past our souls, for saying so. 
The mysteries of life and death avenge 

Affections light of range : 
There comes no change to justify that change, 

Whatever comes, — loved once ! " 




XII. 




IP EN, by reason of their hardness of 
heart, gravitate towards the material 
theory, and women, by reason of 
their softness of heart, lower to the 
same level. Men defv heaven and earth to 
compass self-indulgence, and women defy the 
divine law written in their hearts rather than 
thwart men. Instead of setting their faces like 
a flint against this tendency, they accept it, excuse 
it, try to think it inevitable, a matter of organiza- 
tion, and make the best of it. They will counsel 
young girls not to reckon upon receiving as much 
love as they give ! Fatal advice ! Disastrous 
generalization ! Yet neither unnatural nor un- 
kind, for it is the fruit of a sad and wide experience. 
They would gladly spare fresh souls the apples of 
Sodom, whose fair seeming bewrayed themselves ; 
but they should teach them to avoid disappoint- 
ment, not by counting upon bitterness, but by 
rejecting apples of Sodom altogether, and receiv- 
ing only such fruit as cheers the heart of God as 



220 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

well as man. Why shall not women receive as 
much love as they give ? Is man less capable of 
loving than woman ? Where in nature or in reve- 
lation is the warrant for such an hypothesis ? When 
He commands, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength," is he 
not speaking to men as well as women ? and are a 
man's heart, soul, mind, and strength less than a 
woman's ? Are not husbands commanded to love 
their wives even as Christ loved the Church ? and 
did he love the Church less than the Church loved 
him ? Is not every man commanded in particular 
to love his wife even as himself, — to love his wife as 
his own body ? and is a man's love to himself, his 
love to his own body, a feeble and untrustworthy 
sentiment ? You find in the Bible no letting a man 
off from his duties of love ; no letting him down. 
Old-fashioned as it is, written for a state of society 
far different from ours, often brought forward to 
prop up old wrongs and bluff off newly-found 
rights, the Bible is still the very storehouse of re- 
forms. It contains the germs not only of spiritual 
life, but of spiritual living. Glows on its pages 
the morning-red which has scarcely yet gilded the 
world. 

Women must not expect to receive as much 
love as they give ! It is inviting men to esteem 
lightly what should be a priceless possession. It 
is not waiting for them to drag down the banner 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 221 

to the dust ; it is making haste to trail it for them 
with malice aforethought. Men now are not too 
constant, too devoted to the higher aims of life; 
but let constancy and devotion not be expected 
of them, and in what seven-league boots will they 
stride down the broad road ! It is doing them 
but left-handed service thus to throw the door 
open to weakness and wavering concerning higher 
interests, and a bhnd devotion to the god of this 
world. To assume that their tone may be low, is 
to lower their tone. Men are less good than they 
would be if goodness were demanded of them. 
The current is turbid and unwholesome, because it 
is not strictly required to be pure and clear. The 
way for women to be truly serviceable to men, is 
to be themselves exacting. 

" Exacting " ? What word is that ? An ex- 
acting woman ? An exacting wife ? '' Hail ! 
Horrors, hail ! " The unlovely being has existed, 
and within the memory of men still living, but it 
has always been looked upon as a monster, 

" Whom none could love, whom none could thank, 
Creation's blot, creation's blank ! " 

We have fallen on evil times indeed if such a 
being is to be held up for approval and imita- 
tion. 

But the character of exaction depends somewhat 
on the nature of the thing exacted. To exact 
from a man that to which you have a right, and 



222 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

whicli it IS his own truest interest to bestow, is 
neither unchristian nor unamiable. One may and 
should grant large room for the play of tastes ; for 
differences of organization, opinion, habit, educa- 
tion ; but a catholicity which admits to its presence 
anything that defileth is no fruit of that tree whose 
leaves are for the healing of the nations. The 
gardener who is tolerant of weeds and not un- 
tender towards misshapen, or dwarfed, or other- 
wise imperfect flowers will have but a sorry show 
for the eyes of the master. Such latitude is a 
source of deterioration. It is the kindness which 
kills. Each sex should be to the other an incite- 
ment to lofty aims. Each should stand on its own 
mountain-height and call to the other through 
clear, bright air ; but such sufferance only draws 
both down into the damp, unwholesome valley- 
lands where lurk fever and pestilence. A woman 
cannot with impunity open her doors to unworthy 
guests. There may be bowing and smiling, and 
never-ending smooth speech, but in the end, and 
long before the end, they shall draw their swords 
against the beauty of her wisdom and shall defile 
her brightness. A man may go all lengths in pur^ 
suit of his own selfish comfort, but he does not the 
less respect those who hold themselves above it, 
and if women, who should be pure and purifying, 
mar the spotlessness of a divine sanctity and lessen 
the claims of an imperial dignity, thinking thereby 
to be meeter for profane approach, they work a 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 223 

work whose evil strikes its roots into the inmost Hfe 
of society. From mistaken kindness woman may 
weave a narrow garland, but there is lost a glory 
from the hand that bears and the brow^ that wears 
it. If the queen is content to spend her life in 
the kitchen over bread and honey, and if she is 
satisfied that the king spend his in the parlor 
counting out his money, neither king nor queen 
mil receive that homage or command that alle- 
giance w^hich is the rightful rpyal prerogative. 

There is a foolish subservience, an ostentatious 
and superficial chivalry, an undignified and slavish 
deference to whims which silly women demand 
and sillier men grant. Yet even this is not so 
much the fault of the weak women as of the strong 
men, who surround women with the atmosphere 
which naturally creates such weakness. But wo- 
men have a right, and it is their duty to expect, to 
claim, to exact if you please, a constancy, spiritu- 
ality, devotion, as great as their own. Where God 
makes no distinction of sex in his demands upon 
mankind. His creatures should not make distinc- 
tions. " Men are different from women," is the 
conclusion of the whole matter at female debating- 
societies, and the all-sufficient excuse for every 
short-coming or over-coming; but the Apostles 
and Prophets find therein no warrant for a vio- 
lation of moral law, no guaranty for immunity 
from punishment, no escape from the obligations 
to unselfish and righteous living. Nowhere does 



224 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

the Saviour of the world proclaim to men a 
liberty in selfishness or sin. His kingdom will 
never come, nor his will be done on earth as it is 
done in heaven, so long as men are permitted to 
take out indulgences. If they do it ignorantly, not 
knowing the true character and claims of woman- 
hood, nor consequently of manhood, they should 
be taught. If they think a wife's chief duty is to 
economize her husband's fortunes, or to minister 
to his physical comforts, they should be speedily 
freed from the illusion. If they suppose knowl- 
edge to be ill-adapted to the female constitution, 
and harmless only when administered homoeopathi- 
cally, they should be quietly undeceived. If they 
have been so trained that marriage is to them but 
unholy ground whereon is found no place for 
modesty, chastity, delicacy, reverence, how shall 
they ever unlearn the bad lesson but through pure 
womanly teaching ? 

But women fear to take this attitude. There 
are many indeed who have become so demoralized 
that they do not know there is any such attitude 
to take ; but there are others who do see it, and 
shrink from assuming it. Women whose courage 
and fortitude are indescribable, who will brave 
pain and fatigue and all definite physical obstacles 
in their path, will bow down their heads like a bul- 
rush with fear of that indefinable thing which may 
be called social disapprobation. Through coward- 
ice, they are traitors to their own sex, and impedi-. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 225 

ments to the other. One cannot find it in his 
heart to blame them harshly. The weakness has so 
many palliations, it is so natural a growth of their 
wickedly arranged circumstances, as to disarm re- 
buke and move scarcely more than pity ; but it is 
none the less a fact, lamentable and disastrous. 
Women who know and lament the erroneous no- 
tions and the guilty actions of men concerning wo- 
man, and the culpable relations of men to women, 
will endeavor to hold back the opinions of a woman 
when they go against the current. They will admit 
the force of all her objections, the justice of every 
remonstrance, but will assure her that opposition 
will be of no avail. She will accomplish nothing, 
but — and here lies the real bugbear — but she 
will make men almost afraid of her ! 

I would that men were not only almost, but al- 
together afraid of every woman ! I would that 
men should hold woman in such knightly fear that 
they should never dare to approach her, matron or 
maid, save with clean hands and a pure heart ; 
never dare to lift up their souls to vanity nor 
swear deceitfully ; never dare to insult her pres- 
ence with words of flattery, insincerity, coarseness, 
sensuality, mercenary self-seeking, or any other 
form of dishonor. I would that woman were her- 
self so noble and wise, her approbation so unques- 
tionably the reward of merit, that a man should 
not dare to think ignobly lest his ignoble thought 
flower into word or act before her eyes ; should 

10* o 



226 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

not wish to think ignobly, since it removed him to 
such a distance from her, and wrought in him so 
sad an nnhkeness to her ; should not be able to 
think ignobly, being interpenetrated with the ce- 
lestial fragrance which is her native air. I would 
have the heathen cloud-divinity which inwraps her 
with a factitious light, only to hide her real fea- 
tures from mortal gaze, torn utterly away, that men 
may see in her the fullest presentation possible to 
earth of the god-like in humanity. So powerfully 
does the Most High stand ready to work in her 
to will and to do of his good pleasure, that she 
may be to man a living revelation, Emanuel, God 
with us. 

We ought to stand in awe of one another. We 
do not sufficiently respect personality. Every 
soul comes fresh from the creative hand and beai's 
its own divine stamp. We should not go thought- 
lessly into its presence. We should not wantonly 
violate its holiness. Even the body is fearfully 
and wonderfully made, and well may be, for it is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost ; but if the temple is 
sacred, how much more that holy thing which the 
temple enshrines, — the unseen, incomprehensible, 
infinite soul, the essential spirit, the holy ghost. 
Who that cherishes the divine visitant in his own 
heart but must be amazed at the reckless irrever- 
ence with which we assail each other. It is not 
the smile, the chance w^ord, the pleasant or even 
the hostile rencounter in the outer courts ; it is that 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 227 

we do not respect each other's silences. We do not 
scruple to pry into the arcana. The hermit's sanc- 
tuary may lie in the huntsman's track, but he will 
liave his pleasure though hermit and sanctuary 
were in the third heaven. We do not accept 
what is given with gladness and singleness of 
heart ; we stretch out wanton hands to pull aside 
the curtain and reveal to the garish day what 
should be suffered to repose in the twilight of 
inner chambers. 

When the prudent adviser, the practical man or 
woman, counsels, " Do not demand so much from 
your friends, — they won't stand it," — am I to in- 
fer that friendship is a mercenarj^ matter, a thing 
of compromise and barter ? Shall I fence in my 
acts, words, thoughts, that I may secure something 
whose sole value, whose sole existence, indeed, lies 
in its spontaneity ? Shall I haggle for incense ? 
Am I loved for what I do, what I say, what I 
think, and not for what I am ? Why, this is not 
love. I am myself, first of all, not Launcelot nor 
another. He who loves me can but wish me to be 
this in fullest measure. I will live my life. I will 
go whithersoever the spirit leads. He who loves 
me will rejoice in this and give me all furtherance. 
I demand all things — in you. I demand noth- 
ing — from you. '' Will not stand it " ? If you 
can hate me, hate me. If you can refrain from 
loving, love not. I can dispense with your regard, 
but there is something indispensable. You shall 



228 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

love me because you cannot help it, or you shall 
love me not at all. If I cannot compel affec- 
tion in the teeth of all conflicting opinion, I re- 
nounce it altogether. If the aroma of character is 
not strong enough to overpower v^ith its sweetness 
all unfragrant exhalations of opinion, it is a matter 
of but small account. 

If two people should design simply to club to- 
gether, to take their meals at the same table and 
dwell under the same roof, it would be a thing to 
be carefully considered ; but when the question is, 
not of association alone, but of absolute oneness, 
not of similarity of tastes or habits, but of an in- 
most and all-prevailing sympathy, it becomes us 
to be wary. Mere mechanical junction is easy 
of accomplishment, but a chemical combination 
demands fine analysis and the most careful adjust- 
ment. It needs not that a globe of fire should 
come raging through the skies to set our world 
ablaze ; a very slight change in the atmosphere 
which embraces it, a little less of one ingredient, a 
little more of another, and the earth and the works 
that are therein shall be burned up. Yet the 
delicacy of matter is but a faint type of the del- 
icacy of mind. He who w^ould pass within the 
veil to commune with the soul between the cher- 
ubim must assume holy garments. If the trouble 
seem to him too great, let him be content to tarry 
wathout. Uzzah put forth an incautious hand and 
touched the ark of God unbidden, and the anger 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 229 

of the Lord was kindled against him, and there he 
died by the ark of God. Now, as then, if any man 
defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy ; 
for the temple of God is holy, w^hich temple ye 
are. 

Yet the general opinion seems to be that human 
beings are made by machinery like Waltham 
watches, and will fit perfectly when brought to- 
gether at random, as the different parts taken in- 
discriminately from a heap of similar parts will fit 
and form a watch. Juxtaposition is the only neces- 
sary preliminary to harmony. On the contrary, it 
is true not only of prodigies, but of every member 
of the race that nature made him and then broke 
the mould. Every person is a prodigy. So great, 
so radical, so out-spreading, are the differences 
between individuals, that the wonder is, not that 
they quarrel so much, but that they are ever peace- 
ful when brought together. The wonder is that 
so many fierce antagonisms can be soothed even 
into an outward quiet. Looking at it as mechan- 
ism, seeing how diverse, aggressive, and impatient 
are the qualities of man, and how peculiarly are 
his circumstances adapted to foster his peculiarities, 
one would say that the only security was in soli- 
tude. Indeed, young people are very apt to think 
so. They combine in an ideal all the charms 
which attract, and exclude from it all the disagree- 
able traits which repel them, and see reality fall 
so far short of their imaginary standard that they 



2^0 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

fully believe they shall never find the ti^ue Prince. 
And they never would, but for an inward, inex- 
plicable suffusion of the Divine .essence, whose 
source and action lie beyond knowledge or control, 
which w^orks without instigation, but is all-powerful 
to create or annihilate. This, however, which is 
the sole explanation of the phenomenon, which is 
the sole conciliator between opposing forces, is 
generally left out of view. People scarcely seem to 
be conscious that there is any phenomenon. They 
philosophize sagaciously upon the singular skill 
which swings unnumbered worlds in space, and 
spins them on in never-ending cycle, yet marks 
out their paths so wisely that world sweeps clear 
of w^orld and never a collision crushes one to ruin. 
But full as the universe is of stars, the nearest are 
hundreds of thousands of miles apart ; while the 
intellectual, nervous worlds that are set going on 
the surface of our earth are close together. Half 
a dozen of them are placed as it were shoulder to 
shoulder. Their zigzag orbits intersect each other 
a hundred times a day. Is it any wonder that 
there is hard abrasion, that surfaces are seamed 
and furrowed, and that sometimes a crash startles 
us ? Is not the wonder rather that crashes are 
not the order of the day, that the seams are seams 
and not cracks through the whole crust, and that 
the largest result of abrasion is smoothness and 
evenness and polish ? 

Yet, utterly unmindful of the fitness of things,. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 231 

people will wonder why a man and a woman who 
are thrown occasionally together do not -— what ? 
Attack each other in an outburst of impatience at 
stupidity and cross-purposes ? Not at all, but 
"strike up a match." That is, put themselves 
into relations which shall turn an association whose 
redeeming feature is that it is casual and under 
control into an association that is constant and ir- 
revocable ! Llasculine backwardness is not per- 
haps considered remarkable, as indeed there is 
very little of it to be remarked, but the utmost 
surprise is expressed on those rare occasions in 
which women are supposed to have declined a 
'' desirable offer." That a woman should not 
avail herself of an opportunity to become the wife 
of a man who is well-educated, well-mannered, 
" well-off," seems to be an inexplicable fact. He 
is her equal in fortune, position, character. Com- 
mentators " cannot see any reason why she should 
not marry him." But is there any reason why she 
should marry him ? The burden of proof lies upon 
motion, not rest; upon him who changes, not upon 
him who retains a position. All these things 
which are called inducements are no more than 
so many sticks and stones ; you might just as 
well repeat the a b c, and call that inducement. 
The matters which bear on such conclusions are 
of an entirely different nature. Your " induce- 
ments " maj* come in by and by, when the main 
point is settled, to modify outward acts, but till 



232 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

the Divine Spirit moves, they are without form 
and void. 

Nor are well-wishers always so careful as to take 
the man himself into the account. If surroundings 
are favorable, if to a by-stander there seems to be 
a sort of house-and-barn adaptation, it is enough. 
House and barn should at once join roof and be- 
come one edifice. It is of no importance that this 
holds stalls for horned oxen, and that entertain- 
ment for angels ; that the one is informed with 
spiritual life and the other filled with hay : hay 
and heaven are all one to many eyes. " Why 
does she not marry hini ? " Why ? Simply be- 
cause there is not enough of him, or what there 
is is not of the right stuff. If he were twenty 
instead of one, she might dare promise to honor 
him, might dare hope to respect him. If he had 
just twenty times as much of being ^ or if his 
amplitude could be converted into fineness, he 
might meet her on equal ground ; ' but being only 
one and such a one, she is in an overwhelming ma- 
jority, and it is not republican that majorities 
should yield to minorities. He may be, as you 
say, "just as good as she," but not good for 
her. 

These views appear in the (perhaps apocryphal) 
stories occasionally told of renowned personages. 
A poor man or an obscure man proposes to a 
young woman whose father is rich, and he is re- 
fused. The poor and obscure man becomes pres- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 233 

ently a great banker, a governor, president of a 
college, or recovers lost counties, or dukedoms in 
Europe. I have even heard the story repeated 
of the Emperor of the French and a New 
York young woman. Moral : Is not the woman 
sorry now that she did not marry the poor man ? 
Probably not. Certainly not if she belongs to 
the true type. What have all these changes to do 
with the matter ? Is he any more comfortable to 
live with because he is a governor? Is he any 
more adapted to her because he is a duke ? It is 
barely possible that she was mistaken ; but if she 
were, she is probably ignorant of it herself. His 
present state does not indicate a mistake. Only a 
close companionship would be likely to discover it. 
The qualities which make domestic content are 
not usually revealed by ever so brilliant public 
success. If they originally existed, they are little 
likely to have been developed. As business af- 
fairs are usually conducted, they are more likely to 
drown out home happiness than to create it. But 
all this is irrelevant. Nothing is really meant to 
which this is an answer. It is only the manifesta- 
tion of a blindness to what constitutes attraction. 
The man has discovered outside advantages, and 
it is assumed that that is enough. She of course 
refused him because she had not sagacity enough 
to discern the shadow of his coming greatness. 
It does not seem to be suspected that she could 
have refused him because he did not suit her ! 



234 A NE W A TMOSPHERE. 

What (lifFerence does it make whether a man 
is a clown or a king, if you do not hke him ? Is 
a great judge necessarily an agreeable person to 
think of? Is a world-renowned jfinancier ne- 
cessarily the person who will have most power 
to draw out what is good and gracious in a wo- 
man ? Girls naturally give their loyalty to men, 
not to crowns, or ermine. The lovely Fiorina 
was as fond of King Charming, when he came 
to her in the shape of a Bluebird, as when he ap- 
peared at court in royal majesty. Wicked out- 
side opinion, it is true, warps their judgment in 
a very great degree, and destroys their freedom ; 
but of their own nature, in their inmost hearts, 
they are true ; and when they have indepen- 
dence enough to manifest their truth in these 
palpable acts, they may be safely set down as 
true. They acted from sincerity and dignity, not 
from mercenary short-sightedness. They acted 
from the most simple and natural causes, and what 
have they to regret ? It is much better to be the 
wife of an honest and respectable American cit- 
izen than to be Empress of the French, — even 
looking at it in a solely ^worldly point of view. 
When we add to this that one loves the Ameri- 
can citizen, and does not love the French Em- 
peror, the case may as well be ruled out of 
court at once. There is no ground for any fur- 
ther proceedings. 

Men and women act upon these views too much, 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 235 

as well in regulating as in establishing a home. 
They recognize and make liberal allowance for 
palpable, outspoken wants, yet are unmindful or 
contemptuous of others equally important, but 
less on the surface, and less sharply defined. A 
man who would incur self-reproach and the con- 
tempt of his neighbors by allowing his wife to 
suffer from lack of bread in his house, will not 
suspect so much as a slight dereliction of duty in 
allowing her to suffer from lack of beauty there, 
A woman who is never weary of meeting the 
demands upon her husband's palate, who will 
have the joint cooked exactly to his liking, and 
the dinner prompt to his convenience, would scout 
the thought of leaving her morning's occupation 
to give him her company in a two hours' drive. 
People will devote their lives uncomplainingly to 
meeting each other's- wants, but will neutralize all 
their efforts and sacrifice happiness hand over hand 
by neglecting or disregarding each other's tastes. 
They will spend all their money in thatching the 
roof, but will do just nothing at all to keep the fire 
alive on the hearth. There are very few indeed 
who are not able to do both. Of course if people 
lavish their whole strength on gross matters, they 
have none left for the finer ; but it is not often that 
gross matters need the whole strength. A careful 
observation and just views would be able, as a 
general thing without detriment, to wrest many an 
hour from vain, vulgar, useless, or harmful pur- 



236 A NEW atmosphere: 

suits, to bestow it upon adornments and amenities 
that do not perish with the using. And if a man 
or a woman is so deteriorated as to prefer the in- 
dulgence of a coarse or frivolous appetite, or the 
inordinate indulgence of a merely natural appetite, 
to the gratification and cultivation of refined and 
elevated tastes, — the more 's the pity ! 




XIII. 




MARVEL that men who lay so little 
stress on the heart, by reason of the 
great stress they lay upon the Intellect, 
should use their intellects to so little 
purpose in matters so important, and which come 
so closely home to their business and bosoms as 
those we have been discussing. I marvel that, 
while they see facts so distinctly, they have so 
little skill to trace out causes. Many instances 
have been given to show how far more unrea- 
sonable, intense, malignant, vulgar, and venomous 
is the hatred of their country shown and felt by 
Southern women than that evinced by Southern 
men. It is very commonly said that they have 
done more than the men to keep alive the rebel- 
lion. The coarseness and impropriety of their 
behavior have been relatively far greater than 
that of the men. Has any one ever suggested that 
the narrowness, the utter insufficiency of their 
education, the state of almost absolute pupilage 
bedizened over with a 'gaudy tinsel of tilt and 



238 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

tournament cliivalry in which they have been kept, 
absolutely incapacitating them for broad views, 
rational thinking, or even a refined self-possession 
in emergencies, had anything to do with it ? In 
a newspaper published under the auspices of one 
of our Sanitary Fairs, a contributor says : "I 
never saw a nurse from any hospital, but I asked 
her the question if the ladies there worked without 
jealousy or unkind feeling toward each other ? and 
I have not found the first one who could answer 
' yes ' to that question I know a gentle- 
man (a noble one, too) who urged his daughter 
not to go to the hospitals, ' because,' said he, 
' you will surely get into a muss : it cannot be 
helped ; women cannot be together without it." 
Is it indeed an arrangement of Divine Providence, 
that women cannot act together without so much 
bickering, jealousy, petty domineering, small envies, 
and venomous quarrels, as to make it undesirable 
that they should act together at all ? Is magnanim- 
ity impossible to women ? Are they incapable of 
exercising it towards each other ? Or may it not 
be that their lives have generally so little breadth, 
they are so universally absorbed in limited inter- 
ests, their " sphere " has been so rigidly circum- 
scribed to their own families, that when they are 
set in wider circles, they are like spoiled children ? 
In the troubles that arise in female conventions and 
combinations, I do not see any inherent deficiency 
of female organization, but every sign of very 
serious deficiencies in female education. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 239 

Men make merry over the unwillingness of 
women to acknowledge their increasing years ; 
over the artifices to which they resort for the pur- 
pose of hiding the encroachments of time ; but the 
reluctance and the deception are the direct harvest 
of men's own sowing. It is men, and nobody else, 
who are chiefly to blame for the weakness and the 
meanness. They have decreed what shall be coin 
and what counters, and women do but acknowl- 
edge their image and superscription. Exceptions 
are not innumerous, but I think every one will 
confess, upon a moment's reflection, that in the 
general apportionment the heroines of literature 
are the lovely and delightful young women, and 
the hatred, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness 
are allotted to the old. Hetty Sorrels are not 
very common, nor Mrs. Bennetts very uncom- 
mon. Why should not women dread to be thought 
old, when age is tainted and taunted ? Why 
should they not fight off its approaches, when it is 
indissolubly connected with repulsive traits ? Wo- 
men see themselves prized and petted, not chiefly 
for those qualities which age improves, but for 
those which it destroys or impairs. And as w^omen 
are made by nature to set a high value upon the 
good opinions of men, and are warped by a vicious 
education into setting almost the sole value of life 
upon them, they logically cling with the utmost 
tenacity to that youth which is their main security 
for regard. '' Youth and beauty " are the twin 



240 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

deities of song and story. " Youth and beauty " 
are supposed to unlock the doors of fate. It is no 
matter that in real life fa(5t may not comport with 
the statements of fiction. No matter that in real 
life the strongest power carries the day, whether it 
be youthful or aged, fair or frightful. The events 
of real life have but small radii, but the ripples 
of romance circle out over the whole sea of civil- 
ization, and wave succeeds wave till the impres- 
sion becomes wellnigh continuous. 

(One can hardly suppress a smile, by the way, at 
the absurdity which this coupling sometimes pre- 
supposes. A man wdll think to swell your horror 
of rebel barbarities by asserting that they spared 
neither youth nor beauty, as if you like to be shot 
any better because you are old and ugly !) 

So with tight-lacing and the new attachment of 
a chiropodist to fashionable families.' Most men, 
it is true, harangue against the former ; but if 
masculine sentiment were really set against tight- 
lacing and its results, do you think girls would 
long make their dressing-maids sit up w^aiting 
their return from balls, lest an unpractised hand 
should not unloose the lacings by those short 
and easy stages which are necessary to prevent 
the shock of nature's too sudden rebound ? Or 
if you plead '' not guilty " to this count, do you 
believe that girls w^ho have been liberally educated, 
taught to turn their eyes to large prospects, large 
duties, and large hopes, could be induced so to put 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 241 

themselves to the torture ? Was a right-minded 
and right-hearted loving and beloved wife, an in- 
telligent and judicious Christian mother, a wise 
and kindly woman, ever known voluntarily to as- 
sume a strait-waistcoat ? If girls were trained as 
every living soul should be trained, would it be 
necessary to have a " professor " go the rounds of 
fine houses in the morning to undo the injuries in- 
flicted by tight shoes on the previous evening? 
If a girl were sagaciously managed, would she 
not have too much discrimination to suppose that, 
when a poet sings of 

" Her feet beneath her petticoat 
Like little mice," 

she is expected to reduce her feet to the dimensions 
of mice, or that, when he announces 

" That which her slender waist confined 
Shall now my joyful temples bind," 

she is thinking of a slenderness produced by lashing 
herself to the bedpost? Be sure a woman will 
never cramp her body in that way, until society 
has cramped her soul and mind to still more un- 
natural distortion. Lay the axe unto the root of 
the tree, if you wish to accomplish anything ; do 
not merely stand off and throw pebbles at the 
fruit. 

Society is unsparing in its censure of the girl 
who boasts of her '' offers." There are few things 
which men will not sooner forgive than the reve- 
II p 



242 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

lation of their own rejected proposals. Bayard 
Taylor makes Hannah Thurston recoil in disgust 
at Seth Wattles's hesitating suggestion: ''You, — 
you won't say anything about this ? " " What do 
you take me for ? " exclaims immaculate woman- 
hood. Why then is a girl's life made to consist in 
the abundance of her suitors ? It is stamped a 
shame for a woman not to receive an offer, and 
then it is stamped a shame for her to take away 
her reproach by revealing that she has received 
one. Surely, she is in evil case I 

I do not profess any overweening admiration 
for those qualities of character which induce the 
exultant publication of such personal items ; but 
I do say that men have no right to complain. 
The natural results of their own course would 
not be any more than accomplished, if " offers " 
were published in the newspapers along with the 
deaths and marriages. 

If you really wish women to be magnanimous, 
catholic, you must grant to them the conditions 
of becoming so. Just so long as their souls are 
cabined, cribbed, and confined, whether in a pal- 
ace or in a hovel, with only such fresh air as 
a narrow crevice or casement may afford, they 
will have but a stunted and unsymmetrical de- 
velopment. You cannot systematically and de- 
liberately dwarf or repress nine faculties, and 
wickedly stimulate one, and that a subordinate 
one, gmd then have as the result a perfect woman. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 243 

You may force Nature, but she will have her 
revenges. He that offendeth in one point, is 
guilty of all. The blow that you aim at the 
head, not only makes the whole head sick, but 
the whole heart faint. When you have brought 
women to the point of writing such babble as, 

" We poor women, feeble-natured, 
Large of heart, in wisdom small, 
Who the world^s incessant battle 

Cannot understand at all," &c., &c., &c., 

do you think you have laid the foundation for solid 
character? Lay aside your alternate weakness 
and severity, your silly coddling and your equally 
silly cautioning, and permit a woman to be a 
human being. Let the free winds have free ac- 
cess to her, bringing the fragrance of June and 
the frostiness of December. Fling wide open all 
the portals, that the sacred soul may go in and out 
as God decreed. Let every power w^hich God 
has bestowed have free course to run and be 
glorified, and you shall truly find before long 
that the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in 
the hands of women. 

If the weakness and ignorance and frivolity of 
which I have spoken be natural, as it is insisted, 
if the heaven-born instincts of women do, as you 
in effect asseverate, lead women to devote them- 
selves exclusively to all manner of materialism 
and pettinesses, and to be content with what sus- 
tenance they can find in the crumbs of love that 



244 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

fall from tlieir husbands' tables ; if it is unnatural 
and unwomanly, as you say it is, to have other 
inclinations and aspirations, and to experience 
any personal or social discontent, — why do you 
say so much to urge them to such devotion and 
content? People are not largely given to do- 
ing unnatural things. They do not need incen- 
tives, strenuous persuasion, labored and reiterat- 
ed arguments, to induce them to do what their 
hearts by creation incline them to do ; nor do 
they need to be held back by main force from 
that to which they have no natural leaning. No- 
body builds a dam to make water run dow^n hill. 
No tunnelling nor blasting of rocks is necessary 
to lure rivers to the ocean. No urging and 
coaxing must be resorted to before the parent- 
robins build a nest and gather food for their 
young. But the instincts of women are as strong, 
the nature of women is as marked, as those of 
birds, and there is no need of your counselling 
them to walk in"" the paths which God has ap- 
pointed for their feet. No. You do not really 
beheve what you are saying. You feel, if you 
do not know, — you have a dim, instinctive sense 
that the life which you appoint to women is not 
their natural life. It crushes and deforms their 
nature continually, and continually Nature bursts 
out in violent resistance, and continually with 
shriek and din and clamor you strive to frighten 
her back into her narrow torture-house, with a 
success all too great. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 245 

There seems to lurk in the masculine breast an 
unmanly fear lest the development of the female 
mind should be fatal to the superiority of the 
male mind. But a superiority which must pro- 
long its existence by the enforcement of igno- 
rance is of a very ignoble sort. If, to preserve 
his relative position, ^man must, by persuasion or 
by law, forbid to women opportunities for edu- 
cation and a field for action, together wdth moral 
support in obtaining the one and contesting in the 
other, he pays to the female mind a greater com- 
pliment, and heaps upon his own character a 
greater reproach, than the highest female attain- 
ments could do. He shows that he dares not 
risk a fair trial. If she cannot rival him, the 
sooner she makes the attempt, and incurs the 
failure, the sooner will she revert to her old po- 
sition, and the sooner will peace be restored. 
The very discouragement by which man sur- 
rounds her shows that he does not believe in 
the original and inherent necessity of her present 
positioii. If this counsel be of women merely, 
it will come to naught of itself. You need not 
bring up so much rhetoric against it. But if it 
be of God, ye cannot overthrow it ; lest haply 
ye be found even to fight against God. J 

There is another fear, equally honest, but more 
honorable, or rather less dishonorable. There is 
a belief, apparently, that the womanly character 
somehow needs the restraints of existing customs. 



246 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

It is feared that a sudden rush of science to the 
female brain would produce asphyxia in the fe- 
male heart. It is feared that the study of phi- 
losophy, the higher mathematics, and the ancient 
languages would unsex women, — would destroy 
the gentleness, the tenderness, the softness, the 
yieldingness, the sweet and endearing qualities 
M^hich traditionally belong to them. They would 
lose all the graces of their sex, and become, say 
men, as one of us. 

From such a fate, good Lord ! deliver us. I 
agree most heartily with men in the opinion, that 
no calamity could be more fatal to woman than 
a growing likeness to men ; but no cloud so big 
as the smallest baby's smallest finger-nail portends 
it. Healthy development never can produce un- 
healthy results. Nature is never at war with 
herself. The good and wise and all-powerful 
Creator never created a faculty to be destroyed, 
a faculty whose utmost cultivation, if harmonious 
and not discordant, should be injurious. He 
made all things beautiful and beneficial in their 
proper places. It is only arbitrary contraction 
and expansion that produce mischief. It is the 
neglect of one thing and the undue prominence 
given to another that destroys symmetry and 
causes disaster. 

There has been so little experiment made in 
female education, that we must reason somewhat 
abstractly ; yet we are not left, even in this early 
stage, without witnesses. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 247 

On the 26th of May, 1863, died Mrs. O. W. 
Hitchcock, wife of one of the Presidents of Am- 
herst College. A writer, who professes to have 
known her well, gives the following account of 
her : — 

" Born in Amherst, March 8th, 1796, fitted for 
college and accomplished alike in the fine arts and 
the exact sciences in an age w^hen the standard of 
female education was comparatively low, associ- 
ated with Dr. Hitchcock, then unknown to the 
public, in the instruction of Deerfield Academy, 
and there the instrument of her future husband's 
conversion, filling to the full the office of a pastor's 
wife for five years, in Conway, Massachusetts, and 
for the rest of her long life sharing all her hus- 
band's labors, sorrows, joys, and honors, while at 
the same time she was the centre of every pri- 
vate, social, charitable, and public movement of 
which it was suitable for a lady to be the centre, 
she passed away from us by a death as serenely 
beautiful as the evening on which she died. May 
26, 1863, at the age of sixty-seven, leaving a 
vacancy not only in the home and the hearts of 
her bereaved husband and afflicted children, but 
in the community and the wide circle of her ac- 
quaintance, which can be filled by none but Him 
w^ho comforted the mourning family at Bethany. 
If strangers would form some idea of what Mrs. 
Hitchcock was, especially as a help meet for her 
honored husband, and if friends would refresh 



248 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

their memory of a truly ' virtuous woman/ let 
them read, as it were over her still open grave, 
the dedication, by Dr. Hitchcock, of his ^ Religion 
and Geology ' to his ' beloved wife.' Never did 
husband pay to wife a higher or juster tribute of 
respect and affection. 

" The following is the dedication referred to. 
It was written in 1851 : — • 

" ' To my leloved Wife. Both gratitude and affec- 
tion prompt me to dedicate these Lectures to you. 
To your kindness and self-denying labors I have 
been mainly indebted for the ability and leisure to 
give any successful attention to scientific pursuits. 
Early should I have sunk under the pressure of 
feeble health, nervous despondency, poverty, and 
blighted hopes, had not your sympathies and 
cheering counsels sustained me. And during the 
last thirty years of professional labors, how little 
could I have done in the cause of science, had 
you not, in a great measure, relieved me of the 
cares of a numerous family ! Furthermore, while 
I have described scientific facts with the pen only, 
how much more vividly have they been portrayed 
by your pencil ! And it is peculiarly appropriate 
that your name should be associated with mine in 
any literary effort where the theme is geology ; 
since your artistic skill has done more than my 
voice to render that science attractive to the 
young men whom I have instructed. I love es- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 249 

pecially to connect your name with an effort to 
defend and illustrate that religion which I am sure 
is dearer to you than everything else. I know 
that you would forbid this public allusion to your 
labors and sacrifices, did I not send it forth to 
the world before it meets your eye. But I am 
unwilling to lose this opportunity of bearing a tes- 
timony which both justice and aifection urge me 
to give. In a world where much is said of female 
deception and inconstancy, I desire to testify that 
one man at least has placed implicit confidence in 
woman, and has not been disappointed. Through 
many checkered scenes have we passed together, 
both on the land and the sea, at home and in for- 
eign countries ; and now the voyage of life is al- 
most ended. The ties of earthly affection, which 
have so long united us in uninterrupted harmony 
and happiness, will soon be sundered. But there 
are ties which death cannot break ; and we in- 
dulge the hope that by them we shall be linked 
together and to the throne of God through eter- 
nal ages. In life and in death I abide 
" ' Your affectionate husband, 

" ' Edv^ard Hitchcock.' " 

Note here everything, but specially two things. 

1. Mrs. Hitchcock was fitted for college, accom- 
plished in the fine arts and the exact sciences, 
sympathized in her husband's tastes and under- 
stood his pursuits so thoroughly as to be able to 
11=^ 



250 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

render him essential assistance in his professional 
duties. 

2. Note the use and connections of the word 
kindness. She relieved him of the cares of a 
numerous family, and so gave him leisure for his 
scientific researches. Does that invalidate what I 
have before said regarding paternal duties ? On 
the contrary, it strengthens my words. Dr. Hitch- 
cock, in the fulness of his beautiful fame, in the 
ripeness of his years, confirms the truth of my 
principles. He knew — the great-hearted gentle- 
man, the beloved disciple — that these cares be- 
longed to him by right, and that it was of grace 
and not of law that his wife assumed them. So 
impressed is he with her kindness, so filled with 
gratitude is his magnanimous heart, that he even 
ventures to run the risk of wounding her delicacy 
by offering thanks in this public manner ; shield- 
ing her, however, from every breath of offence by 
skilfully declaring her fi:'eedom from all participa- 
tion in the publicity. ITe uses the word kindness 
properly. It was a kindness, indeed, for her to 
step out of her own sphere and assume the bur« 
dens of his ; but her husband's love was her im- 
pelling motive, and his gratitude her exceeding 
great reward. Not strictly her duty, it became 
undoubtedly her delight. For love is lavish. 
/Love counts no sacrifice, knows of none. For a 
husband who loved and recognized her, a wife 
would bear Atlas on her shoulders. Only when 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 251 

it is coldly reckoned upon as a right, coldly re- 
ceived as a due, does service become servitude. 

Read now the dedication of that royal book 
" On Liberty," by John Stuart Mill, " one of the 
most powerful and original thinkers of the nine- 
teenth century," a man of culture so thorough 
that his has been said to be the most cultivated 
mind of the age : — 

" To the beloved and deplored memory of her 
who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of 
all that is best in my writings, — the friend and 
wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was 
my strongest incitement, and whose approbation 
w^as my chief reward, — I dedicate this volume. 
Like all that I have written for many years, it 
belongs as much to her as to me ; but the work as 
it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the 
inestimable advantage of her revision ; some of 
the most important portions having been reserved 
for a more careful re-examination, which they are 
now never destined to receive. Were I but ca- 
pable of interpreting to the world one half the 
great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried 
in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater 
benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from any- 
thing that I can write, unprompted and unassisted 
by her all but unrivalled wisdom." 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, we are told by 
encyclopedists, was educated in a masculine 
range of studies, and with a masculine strictness 



252 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

of intellectual discipline. The poets and philoso- 
phers of Greece were the companions of her mind. 
In imaginative power and originality of intellectual 
construction she is said to be entitled to the very 
first place among the later English poets. She 
had considered carefully, and was capable of treat- 
ing wisely, the deepest social problems which 
have engaged the attention of the most sagacious 
and practical minds. Society in the aggregate, 
and the self-consciousness of the solitary individual, 
were held in her grasp with equal ease, and ob- 
served with equal accuracy. She had a states- 
man's comprehension of the social and political 
problems which perplex the well-wishers of Italy, 
and discussed them with the spirit of a statesman. 
This is not my pronunciamento nor my language, 
but those of Hon. George S. Hillard. 

With a word fitly spoken this eminently strong- 
minded woman drew to her side a poet of poets, 
and he in turn drew her to his heart. 

When ten years of marriage had made him so 
well acquainted with his wife as to give weight to 
his testimony, he wrote, at the close of a volume of 
poems called '' Men and Women," *' One word 
more," — surely the seemliest word that ever poet 
uttered. He sang of the one sonnet that Rafael 
wrote, of the one picture that Dante painted, — 

" Once, and only once, and for one only, 
(Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient,*' — 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 253 

and somewhat sadly adds : — 

" I shall never, in the years remaining, 
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 
Make you music that should all-express me ; 
So it seems : I stand on my attainment. 
This of verse alone, one life allows me ; 
Other heights in other lives, God willing — 
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love ! 

*' Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. 
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly. 
Lines I write the first time and the last time. 

He who writes may write for once, as I do. 

" Love, you saw me gather men and women. 
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy. 

I am mine and yours, — the rest be all men's. 

Let me speak this once in my true person, 

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence, — 
Pray you, look on these my men and women, 
Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also ! 
Poor the speech ; be how I speak, for all things. 

" Not but that you know me ! Lo, the moon's self ! 
Here in London, yonder late in Florence. 
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 

What, there 's nothing in the moon noteworthy? 
Nay — for if that moon could love a mortal. 
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy) 
All her magic ('t is the old sweet mythos) 



254 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

She would turn a new side to "her mortal, 

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman, — 

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace. 

Blind to Galileo on his turret. 

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even ! 

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, — one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her. 

" This I say of me, but think of you, Love ! 
This to you, — yourself my moon of poets ! 
Ah, but that 's the world's side, — there 's the wonder, — 
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you. 
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you, 
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it, 
But the best is when I glide from out them, 
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight. 
Come out on the other side, the novel 
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
When I hush and bless myself with silence. 

^' 0, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 
0, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 
Wrote ond song — and in my brain I sing it, 
Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom ! " 

Have you read it a hundred times before ? Are 
you not grateful to me for giving you an excuse 
to begin on the second hundred? 

women, since the heavens have been opened 
to reveal these points of light, and you can infer 
somewhat the radiance which may wrap you about 
with ineffable glory, will you be satisfied again 
with the beggarly elements of a sordid world ? 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 255 

Seeing on what heights a woman maj^ stand, will 
you lower to the level graded by generations of 
silly, selfish, sensual male minds ? Is it really 
worth while ? If it is not a good bargain to lose 
your own soul that you may gain the whole world, 
what must it be to lose your soul and gain only a 
few stereotyped phrases ? If every other man 
that ever lived preached a crusade for " stocking- 
mending, love, and cookery," and only these three 
whom I have mentioned bore a different banner, 
would it not still be better to shape your course by 
theirs ? Is it not better to be worthy of the re- 
spect and reverence of thinkers, than to receive 
the serenade of sounding brass ? Is it not better 
to heed the one true voice crying in the wilderness, 
than to join in the uproar of the idolatrous mob 
that shouts, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " 
When I lose faith in human destiny, and am al- 
most ready to say, " Who shall show us any good ? " 
I remember these utterances, — so lofty that one 
may say, not as the fulsome courtiers of old time 
cried, but reverently and duly, " It is the voice of 
God, and not of men," — I recall these utterances, 
the first so heartsome and overflowing that there is 
no thought for niceties of phrase, but only one eager 
desire to pay an undemanded tribute, only a warm, 
imperative urgency of expression ; the second in- 
expressibly mournful, but with such calm majesty 
of pain as an ancient sculptor might have wrought 
into passionless marble, or a Roman Senator folded 



256 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

beneath his mantle; — in the first, a man looking 
from his happy earthly home, forward and upward 
to a happier home in heaven ; in the second, one 
gazing hopelessly from his waste places down into 
darkness and the grave ; — the first believing, " Be- 
cause I five ye shall live also " ; the second sadly 
querying, ^' Man goeth to the grave, and where is 
he ? " — the first become as a little child through 
faith ; the second only as a pagan sage by reason ; — 
the third heaping up with ever unwearied and ever 
more delighted hand the brightest gems of learning 
and fancy to adorn a beloved brow ; — all turning at 
the summit of their renown, at the point of their 
grandest achievement, to do honor to a woman, the 
first two vindicating the- intellect of wifeliness, the 
last the wifeliness of intellect ; all breathing a 
magnanimity in whose presence no smallness can 
be so much as named ; — and I say there is more 
strength and courage to be gained, more hope for 
the future and more faith in humanity to be 
gathered, from such a glimpse than from the con- 
templation of five — what ? hundred ? thousand ? 
millions ? — of ordinary marriages. 

But to return to the question at issue, — Are 
these exceptional cases ? It is man's own work if 
they are. Just as the elevation of one negro from 
slavery to supremacy, from stupidity to intelligence, 
is an indisputable proof that the elevation of the 
whole race is possible, so the case of one such 
woman as those I have mentioned settles the ques- 



I 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 257 

tion for the whole sex. All may not attain the 
same heights, but this shows that intellectuality 
is open to them without destroying spirituality. 
Education, it seems, can do just as much for woman 
as for men. As careful mental training makes a 
man large-minded, it makes a woman large-minded. 
If it does not make a man narrow-souled and shal- 
low-hearted, it will not make a woman so. If it 
does not unfit a man for manly duties, it will not 
unfit a woman for womanly duties. If ignorance 
and petty interests and limited views make a man 
trivial, obstinate, prejudiced, why is it not the 
same things which make a woman so ? It is not 
necessary to determine whether there is an essen- 
tial difference between the masculine and feminine 
brain or nature. All the difference, both in quan- 
tity and quality, which any one demands, may 
be granted without affecting this question of men- 
tal culture. No matter whether it be strong or 
weak, large or small, educate what mind there is 
to its highest capacity. If there is no difference, 
it is so much gained. If there is a difference, each 
mind will select from the material furnished that 
w^hich is suitable for its own sustenance. Violet 
and apple-tree grovv^ side by side. If the soil is 
poor they are both meagre ; if the soil is rich, they 
both flourish. From the same tract one gathers 
his golden and mellow fruit, the other her glowing 
purple richness. You may put a covering over the 
violet and stunt it into a pale, puny, sickly thing, 

Q 



M 



258 A JVEW ATMOSPHERE, 

or you may cultivate it to an imperial beauty. But 
it will be a violet still. The utmost cultivation 
will not turn it into an apple-tree. Every plant 
may have a different taste and a different need 
from every other plant, but they all want the 
earth. The tiny draughts of the slender anemone 
are not to be compared with Ihe rivers of sap that 
bear to the royal oak its centuries ; but oak and 
anemone each demands all the juice it can quaff, 
and earth and sea and sky are alike laid under 
tribute to fill the fairy drinking-cup of the one, 
as well as the huge wassail-bowl of the other. 

So with mind. The philosopher, the poet, the 
theologian, the chemist, quarry in the same mine, 
and each brings up thence the treasure that his soul 
loves. The same cloud sweeps over the farmer to 
refresh his thirsty lands, over the philosopher to 
confirm his theories, over the painter to tempt his 
pencil. The principle of selection that obtains in 
the lower ranks of Nature will not fail us in her 
higher walks. 

It is because law, logic, science, philosophy, 
have been so almost exclusively in the hands of 
men, that they have accomplished such puerile re- 
sults. With all their beauty and power, they have 
left our common life so poor, and vapid, and 
vicious, because only half their lesson has been 
learned. But they bear a message from the Most 
High, and when woman shall be permitted to lend 
her hstening ear and bring to the interpretation 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 259 

her finer sense, we shall have good tidings of great 
joy which shall be to all people. 

But what is to become of masculine domination 
and feminine submission ? O faithless and per- 
verse generation ! Do you indeed believe that it 
is " natural " for woman to trust and for man to be 
trusted, — for man to guide and woman to be 
guided, — for man to rule and woman to be ruled? 
In whose hand, then, lies the power to change Na- 
ture ? Is she so weak that a little more or less of 
this or that, administered by one of her creatures, 
can alter all her arrangements ? The granite of 
this round world lies underneath, and the alluvium 
settles on the surface. Do you suppose that any- 
thing and everything you can do in the way of 
cultivation will have power to upheave the gran- 
ite from its hidden depths and send down the allu- 
vium to discharge its underground duties ? What 
bands hold in their place the oxygen and nitro- 
gen ? Who says to the silex and the phosphorus, 
'^ Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther " ? And 
do you think that, if you cannot change the quan- 
tities of these simple elements, whose processes are 
patent to the eye, you can change the qualities of 
the most complex thing in the whole world, which 
works behind an impenetrable veil ? If you can- 
not add one cubit to a woman's stature, nor make 
one hair of her head white or black, do you think 
you can add or subtract one feature from her 
mind ? Cease with high-sounding praise to extol 



260 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

the womanly nature, while practically you deny 
that there is any. Bring your deeds up to your 
words. Believe that God did not give to bird and 
brake and flower a stability of character which he 
denied to half the human race. Believe that a 
woman may be a woman still, though careful cul- 
ture make the wilderness blossom like the rose, 
— and not only a woman, but as much more and 
better a woman as the garden is more and better 
than the wilderness. The distinctions of sex are 
innate and eternal. They create their own bar- 
riers, which cannot be overleaped. 

Do you think that, in the examples which I have 
given, — and perhaps in others which your own 
observation may have furnished you, — there was 
any unusual lack of harmony or adjustment ? Do 
you judge, from the testimony of their husbands, 
that Mrs. Hitchcock, or Mrs. Mill, or Mrs. Brown- 
ing were any more overbearing, any more greedy 
of authority, any more ambitious of outside power, 
any more unlovely and unattractive, than the sil- 
liest Mrs. Maplesap, who never knew any " sterner 
duty than to give caresses " ? He must have used 
his eyes to little purpose wjio has failed to see that, 
in a symmetrical womanhood, every member keeps 
pace with every other. If one member suffers, all 
the members suffer. Power is not local, but all- 
embracing. Weakness does not coexist with 
strength. A silly, shallow woman cannot love 
deeply, cannot live commandingly. I believe that 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 261 

a woman of intellectual strength has a correspond- 
ing affectional strength. An evil education may 
have so warped her that she seems to be a power 
for evil rather than for good ; but, all other things 
being equal, the sounder the judgment the deeper 
the love. The clear head and the strong heart go 
together. A woman who can assist her husband 
in geology, or revise his metaphysics, or criticise 
his poetry, is much more likely to hold him in 
wifely love and honor, is much more likely to en- 
liven his joy and medicine his weariness, than she 
who can only clutch at the hem of his robe. Her 
love is intelligent, comprehensive, firmly founded, 
and not to be lightly disturbed. Weakness may 
possess itself of the outworks, but is easily dis- 
lodged. Strength goes within and takes posses- 
sion. 

All the unloveliness and unwisdom which may 
have characterized the " woman's movement," and 
of which men seem to stand in perpetual dread, 
are but the natural consequence of their own mis- 
doing. It was a reaction against their wrong. Did 
women demand ungracefully ? It was because 
their entreaty had been scorned and their grace 
slighted. Never, — I would risk my life on the 
assertion, — never did any number of women leave 
a home to clamor in public for social rights unless 
impelled by the sting of social wrongs, either in 
their own person or in the persons of those dear 
to them. Every unwomanliness had its rise in a 
previous unmanliness. 



262 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

In a vile, nameless book to which I have before 
referred, I find quoted the story of a rajah who was 
in the habit of asking, '' Who is she ? " whenever 
a calamity was related to him, however severe or 
however trivial. His attendants reported to him 
one morning that a laborer had fallen from a lad- 
der when working at his palace, and had broken 
his neck. '' Who is she ? " demanded the rajah. 
" A man, no woman, great prince," was the re- 
ply. "• Who is she ? " repeated the rajah, with 
increased anger. In vain did the attendants assert 
the manhood of the laborer. '' Bring me instant 
intelligence what woman caused this accident, or 
woe upon your heads ! '* exclaimed the prince. 
In an hour the active attendants returned, and, 
prostrating themselves, cried out, " O wise and 
powerful prince, as the ill-fated laborer was work- 
ing on the scaffold, he was attracted by the beauty 
of one of your highness's damsels, and, gazing on 
her, lost his balance and fell to the ground." 
''You hear now," said the prince, ''no accident 
can happen without a woman being, in some way^ 
an instrument." 

One might, perhaps, be pardoned for asking 
whether entire reliance can be placed on testimony 
which is dictated beforehand on penalty of losing 
one's head ; but the anecdote indicates about the 
usual quantity of sense and sagacity which is pop- 
ularly brought to bear on the " woman question," 
and we will let it pass. I have quoted the story 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 263 

because, by changing the feminine for the mas- 
cuHne noun and pronoun, it so admirably ex- 
presses my own views. As I look around upon 
the world, and see the sin, the sorrow, the suffer- 
ing, it seems to me that, so far as it can be traced , v 
to human agency, man is at the bottom of every I s 
evil under the sun. As the husband is, the wife J 
is. The nursery rhyme gives the ^vhole history // 
of man and woman in a nutshell : — / 

« Jack and Gill 

Went up the hill 
To draw a pail of water ; 

Jack fell down 

And broke his crown, '* 

And Gill came tumbling after." 

Men have a way of falling back on Eve's trans- ; 
gression, as if that were a sufficient excuse for • 
all short- or wrong-coming. Milton glosses over^ 
Adam's part in the transgression, and even gives 
his sin a rather magnanimous air, — which is very , 
different from that which Adam's character wears 
in Genesis, — while all the blame is laid on '' the 
woman whom thou gavest to be w^ith me." But 
before pronouncing judgment, I should like to hear 
Eve's version of the story. Moses has given his, 
and Milton his, — the first doubtless conveying as 
much truth as he was able to be the medium of, the 
second expressing all the paganism of his sex and 
his generation, mingled with the gall of his own 
private bitterness ; but we have never a word from 



I 



2G4 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

Eve. That is, we have man's side represented. 
But Eve will awake one day, ^^d then, and not 
till then, w^e shall know the whole. Meanwhile, it 
is well for men to go back to the beginning of 
creation to find woman the guilty party. If they 
stop anywhere short of it, they will be forced to 
shift the burden to their own shoulders. A wo- 
man may have been originally one step in advance 
of man in evil-doing, but he very soon caught 
up with her, and has never since suffered himself 
to labor under a similar disadvantage. I cannot 
think of a single folly, weakness, or vice in women 
which men have not either planted or fostered ; 
ai^ generally they have done both. But they do 
not see the link between cause and effect, and they 
fail to direct their denunciation to the proper 
quarter. 

It only needs to trust nature ! Learn that wo- 
men crave to pay homage as strongly as men 
crave to receive it. The higher women rise the 
more eagerly will they turn to somewhat higher. 
It cannot be sweeter for a man to be looked up to 
than it is for a woman to look up to him. Never 
can you raise women to such an altitude that 
they will find their pride and pleasure in looking 
down. Women w^ant men to be masters quite 
as much as men themselves wish it ; but they 
want them first to be worthy of it. Women 
never rebel against the authority of goodness, of 
superiority, but against the tyranny of obstinacy, 



/ 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 265 

Ignorance, heartlessness. The supremacy which 
a husband holds by virtue of his character is a 
wife's boon and blessing, and she suns herself in it 
and is filled with an unspeakable content. It is 
the supremacy of mere position, the supremacy of 
inferiority, that galls and irritates ; that breaks out 
in conventions and resolutions and remonstrances, 
in suicide and insanity and crime. " The women 
now-a-days are playing the devil all round," I 
heard a man say not long ago, in speaking of a 
woman hitherto respectable, who had left husband 
and children and eloped with some unknown ad- 
venturer. And I said in my heart, '' I am glad 
of it. Men have been playing the devil single- 
handed long enough. I am glad women are taking 
it up. Similia similihus eurantury Things must, 
to be sure, be in a very dreadful condition to require 
such '' heroic treatment," but things are in a very 
dreadful condition, and if men will not amend 
them out of love of justice and right and purity, I 
do not see any other way than that they must be 
forced to do it out of a selfish regard to their own 
household comfort. Let my people go, that they 
may serve me, was the w^ord of the Lord to 
Pharaoh, but Pharaoh hardened his heart and 
would not let the people go. Not until there was 
no longer in Egypt a house in which there was 
not one dead did the required emancipation come. 
Then with a great cry of horror and dread w^ere 
the children of Israel sent out as the Lord their 

12 



/ 



266 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

God. eommanded. Let my people go, that they 
may serve me, seems the Lord to have been say- 
ing these many years to the taskmasters of Amer- 
ica; but who is the Lord, the taskmasters have 
cried, that we should obey his voice to let Israel 
go ? We know not the Lord, neither will we let 
Israel go. Now on summer fields red with blood, 
through the terrible voice of the cannonade bearing 
its summons of death, we are learning in anguish 
and tears who is the Lord ; and if men choose 
not to do justly and love mercy and walk softly 
with women, it is according to analogy that wo- \ 
J men shall become to them the scourge of God. • 
I The very charities, the tendernesses, the blessing 
' and beneficent qualities against which they have 
sinned shall become thongs to lash and scorpions 
to sting, — and all the people shall say amen ! 

I am so far from being surprised when women 
occasionally run away from their husbands, that I 
rather marvel that there is not a hegira of women ; 
that our streets and lanes are not choked up with 
fugitives. I do not believe in women's leaving 
their husbands to live with other men ; it is infamy 
and it is folly : but I do believe most profoundly 
in women's leaving their husbands. It may be 
their right and their duty. I think there is not 
the smallest danger in the state's putting all pos- 
sible power of this nature into the hands of wo- 
men ; because a woman's nature is such that she 
will never exercise this power till she has borne 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 267 

to the utmost, cruelty, malignity, or indifference ; 
and, in point of morality, indifference is just as 
good ground for separation as cruelty. Love is 
the sole morality of marriage, and a marriage to 
which love has never come, or from which it has 
departed, is immorality, and a woman cannot con- 
tinue in it without continually incurring stain. I 
do not think she has a right to marry again ; not 
even a legal divorce justifies a second marriage ; 
but she has a right to withdraw from the man^who 
imbrutes her. If the law does not justify such 
action, she is right in taking the matter into her 
own hands. There is no power on earth that 
can make a woman live wuth a man, if she chooses 
not to live with him, and has a w^ill strong enough 
to bear out her choice ; and when she finds that 
she ministers only to his selfishness, w^hen she 
discovers that her marriage is no marriage at all, 
but an alliance offensive to all delicacy and op- 
posed to all improvement, she is not only justified 
in discontinuing it, but she is not justified in con- 
tinuing it. The position w^hich a woman occupies 
in such a connection is fairer in the eyes of the 
law, but morally it is no less objectionable thai 
if the marriage ceremony had never taken place, 
A prayer and a promise cannot turn pollution 
into purity. 

Is this a movement towards violating the sanctity 
of marriage ? It is rather causing that marriage 
shall not with its sanctity protect sin. When a 



268 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

slaver, freighted with wretchedness, unfurls from 
its masthead the Stars and Stripes, that it may 
avoid capture, does it thereby free itself from guilt,- 
or does it desecrate our flag ? Who honors his 
country, he who permits the slave-ship to go on 
her horrible way protected by the sacred name 
she has dared to invoke, or he who scorns to suf- 
fer those folds to sanction crime, tears down the 
flag from its disgracing eminence, unlooses the 
bands of the oppressor and bids the oppressed go 
free ? 

But are there not inconstant, weak women, who 
would take advantage of such power, and for any 
fancied slight or foolish whim desert a good home 
and a good husband ? Well, what then ? If 
a silly woman will of her own motion go away 
and live by herself, I think she pursues a wise 
course and deserves well of the Republic. I do 
not believe her good husband will complain. On 
the contrary, he would doubtless adopt a part at 
least of the Napoleonic principle, and build a bridge 
of gold for his fleeing spouse. Such power will 
never make silly women, though it may possibly 
render them more conspicuous, and that will be a 
benefit. The more vividly a wrong is seen and 
felt, the more likely is it to be removed. The 
remedy for the mischief which Lord Burleigh's 
she-fool may do is, not to bind her to your hearth, 
but to keep her away from it altogether; and bet- 
ter than a remedy, the preventive is, so to treat 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 269 

women that they shall not be fools. If the ways 
of male transgressors against women can be made 
so hard that they shall, in A^ery self-defence, set to 
and mend them — Heaven be praised ! 

But what of the Bible ? Is not the permanency 
of the marriage connection inculcated there ? No 
more than I inculcate it. I certainly do not see it 
enforced in any such manner as to weaken my posi- 
tion. Its permanency is assumed rather than en- 
joined ; but a basis of essential oneness is also 
assumed, which is the sufficient, the true, and the 
only true and sufficient basis. '' Therefore," says 
Adam, '' shall a man leave his father and his 
mother, and shall cleave unto his wdfe : and they 
shall be one flesh." But if, instead of cleaving to 
his wife, a man cleaves away from his wife, and in- 
stead of being one flesh, the twain become twain, — 
I do not see that Adam has anything to say on the 
subject. I suppose Eve looked so lovely to him, 
and he was so delighted to have her, that it never 
occurred to him to make any provision against the 
contingency of his abusing her. I have not made 
any especial research, but I do not remember any- 
thing in the precepts or examples of the Bible that 
enjoins the continuance of association in spite of 
everything. In principle it is presumed to be per- 
petual, but in practice the Bible makes certain 
exceptions to perpetuity, — lays down rules indeed 
for separation. " What God hath joined together 
let not man put asunder," says our Saviour, which 



270 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

surely does not mean that what greed or lust or 
ambition has joined together woman may not put 
asunder. When a young man and a maiden, drawn 
towards each other by their God-given instincts, 
have become one by love, no mere outside incom- 
patibility of wealth or rank, or any such thing, 
should forbid them to become one by marriage. 
For what God hath joined together let not man 
put asunder. But the God who would not permit 
an ox and an ass to be yoked together to the same 
plough, never, surely, joined in holy wedlock a 
brute and an angel ; and if the angel struggles to 
escape from the unequal yoke-fellow to whom the 
powers of evil have coupled her, who dare thrust 
her back under the yoke with a " Thus saith 
the Lord " ? Christ himself does not pronounce 
against the putting away of wife or husband, but 
against the putting away of one and marrying 
another. St. Paul's words reo-ardino; the Chris- 
tian and the idolater can hardly be applied in our 
society, but so far as they can be applied they 
confirm my views. " Let not the wife depart 
from her husband," he says, and immediately adds, 
" but and if she depart^ let her remain unmari'ied^ 
or be reconciled to her husband." Precisely. 
For no trivial cause should the wife give her hus- 
band over to be the prey of his own wicked pas- 
sions ; but if he is so bad, if he so degrades her 
life that she must depart, let her remain un- 
married. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 271 

It may be said that the interests of children 
would be compromised by this mode of procedure. 
But the interests of children are already fatally 
compromised. The interests of children are never 
at variance with those of their parents. If it is 
for the interest of the mother to leave her husband, 
it is not for the interest of her children that she 
should stay with him. Whatever mortification or 
disgrace might come to a few children would not 
be the greatest harm that could happen to them, 
and in the end all children would be the gainers. 

" I hold that man the worst of public foes 
Who, either for his own or children's sake, 
To save his blood from scandal, lets the wife 
Whom he knows false abide and rule the house." 

True. For " man " put " woman," and for " wife " 
" husband," and it will be no less true. Of one 
thing be sure. The interests of children need not 
block the wheels of legislation. The mother will 
take them into as earnest consideration as any as- 
sembly of men. If they are not safe in her hands, 
they will not be safe in any hands. 

Furthermore notice, the chief stress of Scriptu- 
ral prohibition is laid on men. The rules and re- 
straints are for men. Very little injunction is given 
to women. The Inspirer of the Bible knew the 
souls which he had made, and for the hardness of 
men's hearts hedged them about with restrictions, 
and for the softness of women's hearts left them 
chiefly to their own sweet will. The great 



272 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

Creator knew that women would never be laro;elv 
addicted to leaving their husbands for triflinoj 
causes, nor hideed are serious causes often sufficient 
to produce such results. The rack and wheel 
and thumb-screw of married hfe are generally less 
powerful than the patience of the wifely heart. 
But his Maker knew, too, the inconstant nature of 
man, and bound him with the strictest charges. 
I am entirely willing to abide by the Bible. Let 
the state abide by it too, and give to women the 
legal power to save themselves. There is no 
danger that they will abuse it. They will even 
use it only to correct the most fatal abuse. 

But what, then, becomes of the marriage vows ? 
Shall all their solemnity vanish as a thread of tow 
when it toucheth the fire ? No ; but I would have 
the marriage vows themselves vanish. They are 
heathenish. They are a relic of barbarism. I 
have never studied into their origin, but there is 
internal evidence that women had neither part nor 
lot in framing them. The whole matter is one of 
those masculinities with which society has been 
saddled for generations, — one of the bungling 
makeshifts to which men resort w^hen they are left 
to themselves, and have but a vague notion of what 
it is that they want, and no notion at all of how 
they are to get it. Look at it a moment. Here 
is the whole world lying before man, waiting for 
him to enter in and take possession. Woman 
desires nothing so much as that he should be 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 273 

monarch of all he surveys. She acknowledges 
him to be in his own right, she implores him to 
be by his own act, king. The greatest blessing 
that can fall upon her is his coronation. It is 
only when the king is come to his own that woman 
can enter into her lawful inheritance. So long 
as he keeps his crown in abeyance, so long as he 
tramples his prerogatives under foot, she too misses 
the purple and the throne. What does he do ? 
Instead of wearing his dignities, and discharging 
his duties, he goes clad in rags, he dwells with 
beggars, he deals in baubles, and depends for 
allegiance upon a word ! With all his power 
depending solely upon himself, with love and life 
awaiting only his worthiness, with a devotion that 
knows no measure standing ready and eager to 
bless him, all the dew of youth, all the faith of in- 
nocence, all the boundless trust of tenderness, all 
the grace and charm and resource of an infinitely 
daring and enduring affection, — he turns away 
from it all and claims the coarseness of a promise ! 
He does not see the invincible strength of that 
subtile, impalpable bond which God has ordained, 
but trusts his fate to a clumsy yet flimsy cord 
which himself has woven, which his eyes can see 
and his hands handle, and in which therefore he 
can believe, no matter though it parts at the first 
strain. 

Does it ? Did a person ever change his course 
out of respect to his marriage vows ? I do not 

12^ R 



274 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

mean his marriage or the marriage ceremony, but 
simply the promises: to love, honor, and cherish 
on the one side ; to love, honor, and obey on the 
other. Did a man's promise ever fetter his tongue 
from uttering the harsh word ? Did a woman's 
promise ever induce her to heed her husband's 
wishes ? I trow not. The honor and love which a 
husband or wife do not spontaneously render, they 
will seldom render for a vow. If the vital spark 
of heavenly flame remains, the promise is of no 
use. If it is gone out, the promise is of no 
power. A solemn declaration of facts, a solemn 
assertion, calling upon God and man for witness, 
would, it seems to me, be equally efficient, and 
much more moral, than the present form of 
promise. . Power over the future is not given 
to any of us, but we can all bear witness of the 
present. The history of this war goes to show 
that oaths of any sort are of but little use, — mere 
wisps of straw when the current sets against them, 
— and that Christ meant what he said when he 
said, " Swear not at all." But, however the case 
may stand regarding facts, there can be but one 
opinion regarding feelings. To swear to preserve 
an emotion or an affection is to assume a burden 
which neither our fathers nor we are able to bear. 
And to take an oath which one has no power to 
keep, has a tendency to weaken in men's minds 
the obligation of oaths. If there must be swear- 
ing, we should act on Paley's hint, and promise to 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 275 

love as long as possible, and then to make the best 
of the bargain. 

That part of the marriage contract which re- 
lates to obedience deserves a separate attention. 
What is meant by a wife's obedience ? Shall an 
adult person of ordinary intelligence forego the 
use of her own judgment and adopt the conclu- 
sions of another person's ? Is that what is meant ? 

To the law and to the testimony again. In the 
beginning nothing is said of obedience or lordship. 
There is no subordination of man to woman or 
woman to man. They are simply one flesh. God 
created man in his own image ; male and female 
created he them. And God blessed them^ and 
said unto them^ have dominion, &c. Eve was to 
have dominion precisely like Adam, so far as we 
can see. But in the fall she forfeited it, and the 
curse came: " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, 
and he shall rule over thee." When the king was 
shorn of his power, the queen was dethroned. 
That settles the question, does it not ? Not at all. 
God so loved the world, that, when the fulness of 
the time was come, he sent forth his Son, made 
of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them 
that were under the law. Christ hath redeemed 
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse 
for us. So then, brethren, we are not children of 
bondwomen, but of free women ! 

If you do not believe the Bible, the curse is 
of no account. If you do believe the Bible, 



276 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

the curse is taken away. Now then where are 
you ? 

But St. Paul is brought in here with great 
effect by the defenders of the old regime. St, 
Paul, living under the new dispensation, became 
its exponent, reduced it to a system, and must be 
considered authority regardmg its meaning and 
design. The curse had been as completely taken 
away then as now, yet he says : '' Wives, submit 
yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the 
Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, 

even as Christ is the head of the church 

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so 
let the wives be to their own husbands in every- 
thing." Can anything be stronger or more ex- 
plicit ? Nothing. But if you take St. Paul, take 
the whole of him. Accepting for wives the injunc- 
tion of submission, accept it also for yourselves ; 
for in the preceding verses he says, " Be filled 
with the spirit, submitting yourselves one to another 
in the fear of God." The same word is used to 
indicate the relations proper between husband and 
wife and between friend and friend. If, then, ac- 
cording to St. Paul, the wife must absolutely obey 
her husband, her husband must just as absolutely 
obey his wife, and both must obey their next-door 
neighbor. 

Observe also the manner of the control and the 
submission, — ^' as unto the Lord." The husband 
is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 211 

of the church. The wife is to be subject to the 
husband, as the church is subject to Christ. Why, 
this is just what I want. Not a wife in Christen- 
dom but would rejoice to recognize her husband 
to be her head as Christ is the head of the church. 
Only let husbands follow their model, and there 
would be no more question of obedience. Quote 
St. Paul against me? St. Paul is my standard- 
bearer ! If you had only obeyed St. Paul, I 
should not be fighting at all. The w^orld would 
go on so smoothly and lovingly that I should 
never be required to stir up its impure mind by 
w^ay of remembrance, but should be occupied in 
writing the loveliest little idyls that ever were 
thought of. It is the flagrant disregard and viola- 
tion of Paul's teachings that brings me unto you 
with a rod instead of in love and the spirit of 
meekness. I want no higher standard than was 
set up by Paul. 

Men reason very w^ell so long as they confine 
their reasoning to pure mathematics, but when 
they attempt to apply their logic to practical life, 
they are at fault. They find it diflicult to make 
allowance for friction. They do not observe, and 
they do not know what to do with their observa- 
tions when they have made them. Consequently, 
though their arguments look very well, they do 
not stand the test of experiment. Nothing can 
be more charming than this implicit trust which 
men so love and laud, this unhesitating sub- 



278 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

mission of the fond wife, — the " God is thy law, 
thou mine " of Milton (which most men evidently 
believe is to be found in all the Four Gospels and 
most of the Epistles). Yet its only practical jus- 
tification would be the infallibility of men. But 
in actual life men are not infallible. They are 
just as likely to be w^rong as women. The only 
obedience practicable or desirable is the adoption 
of the wisest course after consultation. Practi- 
cally, there is seldom much trouble about this mat- 
ter ; but there is none the less for all the theories 
and all the vow^s of obedience. Yet we have it 
from good authority, that it is better not to vow 
than to vow and not pay. 

When I see the strenuousness with w^hich man 
has ever enjoined upon woman respect for his 
position and submission to his will, the persist- 
ence with which he has maintained his superiority 
and her subordination, the compensatory and un- 
reasonable, inconsequent homage which he awards 
to those who acquiesce in his claims, I seem to be 
reading a new version of an old story. Man 
takes w^oman up into an exceeding high mountain, 
and shows her w^hat seems to her dazzled eyes 
all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of 
them, and says unto her, "All these things will I 
give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 
But as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
shall be, — " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and him only shalt thou serve." For many gen- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 279 

erations the world has reaped a bitter harvest from 
worshipping and serving the creature more than 
the Creator. Eve's desire was to the man, and he 
ruled over her consequently, and she brought forth 
a murderer. The virgin-mother rejoiced primarily 
in God, and that Holy Thing which was born of 
her was called the Son of God. For six thousand 
years the works of the flesh have been manifest, 
which are these: adultery, fornication, unclean- 
ness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, 
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, her- 
esies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 
and such like. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, 
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance. 

When women begin to talk of right, men begin 
to talk of courtesy. They are very willing that 
women should be angels, but they are not willing 
that they should be naturally-developed women. 
They like to pay compliments, but they like not to 
award dues. One great article of their belief is, 

that 

" A woman ripens like a peach, 
In the cheeks chiefly," 

and the rod perpetually held over any deeper 
ripening is the not always unspoken threat of a 
forfeiture of masculine deference. From those 
who want w^hat they have not shall be taken away 
that which they have. Very well, take it away. 
No thoughtful woman desires any homage that can 



280 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

be given or withheld at pleasure. The only rev- 
erence, the only respect, which has any value, is 
that which springs from the depths of the heart 
spontaneously. If the politeness which men show to 
•women,^ and for which American men are famous, 
does not spring from their own sense of fitness, if it 
is a kind of barter, a reward of merit, let us dispense 
with it altogether. Sometimes I almost fear that it 
is so. Sometimes I am half inclined to believe that 
men are kind and courteous chiefly to those who 
are independent of them. In a railroad-car, not 
long since, I saw a woman, hard-featured, coarse- 
complexioned, ignorant, rude, and boisterous, en- 
gaged in an altercation with the conductor regard- 
ing her fare. The dozen men in the vicinity leaned 
forward or looked around with intent eyes, and — 
must I say, smiling ? no — grinning faces, and sa- 
luted each fresh outburst of violence with laugh- 
ter. Could a true courtesy have found amusement, 
or anything but pain, in such an exhibition ? The 
woman was most unwomanly, but she was a wo- 
man. That should be enough, on your principles. 
She was a human being. That is enough, on mine. 
In " Our Old Home," Hawthorne — O the late 
sorrow of that beloved name ! — has most tenderlv 
told the story of Delia Bacon. When her book was 
published, we are informed, " it fell with a dead 
thump at the feet of the public, and has never been 
picked up. A few persons turned over one or two 
of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 281 

die volume deeper into the mud. ..... From the 

scholars and critics in her own country, indeed, 
Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier ap- 
preciation." But, " If any American ever wrote 
a word in her behalf. Miss Bacon never knew 
it, nor did I. Our journalists at once repub- 
lished some of the most brutal vituperations of 
the English press, thus pelting their poor country- 
woman with stolen mud, without even waiting to 
know whether the ignominy was deserved. Axid 
they never have known it to this day, nor ever 
will." 

Is this courtesy ? Is this the lofty manhood 
which women are to bow down and worship ? To 
such as these is it that women are to say, " What 
thou bid'st, unargued I obey " ? Men may prom- 
ise all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory 
of them, and women may make never so persistent 
efforts to bow down and enter into possession ; but 
the worship will never be heartsome, nor the title 
ever secure. Never will the human mind, whether 
of man or woman, rest in that which is not excel- 
lent. So long as men are unworthy of fealty, 
they may forever grasp, but they cannot retain it. 
Their empire will be turbulent and their claim dis- 
puted. They will have a secure hold on woman's 
respect only so far as character commands it. 
Feudalism was better than barbarism, and the nine- 
teenth is an advance on the fifteenth century. 
But the inmost germ of chivalry has not yet flow- 



282 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

ered into perfect blossom. By the restiveness of 
woman under the tutelage of man may he meas- 
ure his own short-comings. It is not necessary 
that men should be renowned, but they should be 
great. Fame is a matter of gifts, but character is 
always at command. Not every man can be a 
philosopher, poet, or president, but every man can 
be gentle, reverent, unselfish, upright, magnani- 
mous, pure. In field and wood and prairie, stand- 
ing behind the counter, bending over lapstone or 
anvil, day-book, ledger, or graver, a man may 
fashion himself on the true heroic model, and so 

^' Move onward, leading up the golden year ; 
For unto Mm who works, and feels he works. 
The same grand year is ever at the doors." 

In that grand year courtesy shall be recognized 
as the growth of the soul and not of circumstance. 
A man shall* bear himself towards a woman, not 
according to what she is, but to what himself is. 
He shall dispense the kindnesses of ti'avel, assem- 
bly, and all manner of association, not only to the 
good and the gentle, but also to the froward ; and 
he will do it, not because he thinks it best or 
right, but because he cannot do otherwise, with- 
out working inward violence upon himself. If a 
woman show herself rude or unthinking, or if in 
any way she transgresses the laws of taste, pro- 
priety, or morality, he shall not, therefore, con- 
sider himself at liberty to utter coarse jests or 
coarse rebuke, to cast free looks, or disport him- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 283 

self with laughter. It shall not be possible for 
him to do so ; but he shall rather feel in his own 
heart the thrill and in his own blood the tingle of 
degradation, and gravely and sadly will he 

" Pay the reverence of old days 
To her dead fame ; 
Walk backward with averted gaze, 
And hide the shame." 

Nor shall his deference be confined to woman, but 
man to man shall do that which is seemly. For 
all poverty, loneliness, helplessness, repulsiveness, 
and every form of weakness and misfortune, es- 
pecially for those worst misfortunes that come 
from one's own imprudence or misdoing, he shall 
have sympathy and help. Then, indeed, " shall 
all men's good be each man's rule." Then be- 
tween man and woman shall be no mine and 
thine, but Maud MuUer's dream shall be fulfilled, 
and joy is duty and love is law. 

Much of our classification of qualities into mas- 
culine and feminine, all assignment of superiority 
or inferiority to one or other of the sexes, seems to 
me to be founded on a false conception.* No vir- 

* This paragraph was written with a partial reference to Mrs. 
Farnham's " Woman and her Era," of which book I had at the 
time but a very general notion, derived from one or two news- 
paper notices. Since then the appearance of an unclean criti- 
cism in the " Publishers' Circular '' induced me to suspect that 
the book must embody some unusual excellence, or it could 
not have forced a fallen soul thus to foam out its own shame. 
From such a brief glance as I have been able to give to " Wo- 



284 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

tue, scarcely a quality, is the prerogative of man 
or woman, but manly and womanly together make 
the perfect being. A man who has not in his soul 
the essence of womanhood, is an unmanly man. 
A woman who has not the essence of manhood, is 
an unwomanly woman. It is woman in man, — 
gentleness, guilelessness, truth, permeating strength 
and valor, that gives to man his charm : it is man 
in woman, — courage, firmness, fibre, underlying 
grace and beauty, that give to woman her fasci- 
nation. A brutal man, a weak woman, is as fa- 
tally defective as a coward or an Amazon. God 
made man in his own image; God made man male 
and female. God, then, is in himself type of both 
male and female, and only in proportion as all men 
are womanly and all women manly, does each be- 
come susceptible of the love and worthy of the 
respect of the other. Neither is the man superior 
to the woman, nor the* woman to the man, but 
they twain are one flesh. 

man and her Era/' while these pages are going through the 
press, I infer that, a Utile hidden from common eyes under a 
somewhat appalling mass of metaphysical and other learning, 
are collected a greater number of valuable, timely truths than I 
have met in any other book on this topic. Not agreeing to all 
her opinions, one can but rejoice in the sagacity which most of 
them display, and in the good temper and just spirit which 
characterize all. 



XIV, 




OUBTLESS there are man}^ men who 
will say: To w^hat purpose is all this? 
What new development has arisen to 
necessitate a new outcry? The world 
is getting on very well. People marry and are 
given in marriage ; buy, sell, and get gain. There 
is a good deal of wickedness and suffering, but 
less of both than formerly, and both are evidently 
diminishing. Earth is not heaven, and in the 
world we shall always have tribulation, men and 
women both, but neither men nor women make 
any particular complaint, and on the w^hole it may 
reasonably be inferred that they are getting on 
comfortably. Pray let well enough alone. 

But your well enough cannot be let alone, be- 
cause it is not well enough. Nothing is well 
enough so long as it can be bettered. The w^orld 
is not getting on comfortably, however comfortable 
you may be. Mounted in your car of Juggernaut, 
you may find the prospect pleasing, the motion 
exhilarating, and the journey agreeable, but your 



286 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

Jo triumphe has but a discordant twang to those 
whom you are so pleasantly crushing under your 
chariot-wheels. Your vision is not trustworthy. 
Through I know not what process a judicial blind- 
ness seems to come upon people, so that those 
ways seem good whose end is death. True, the 
world is advancing, but with a motion which, com- 
pared with that which it might attain, is retrogres- 
sion. Whose fiat has decreed, '' Thus fast shalt 
thou go, and no faster " ? Why is it that we only 
creep, when we might run and not be w^eary, 
might mount up with wings as eagles ? Why do 
we dwell, with toil and tears, in the Valley of the 
Shadow of Death, when the voice from heaven 
centuries ago bade us come up higher ? We have 
for our inheritance the elements of all things good 
and great and to be desired ; but we lack the clear 
vision and the cunning hand to construct from 
them the Paradise that every family might be, in 
spite of the sin that despoiled the first ; so we 
continue to dwell without Paradise, and very 
far ofi*. Men and women are at variance with 
themselves and with one another. Power and 
passion run to waste. Positions are inverted, 
relations confiised, and light obscured. The sanc- 
tuary of the Lord is built up with untempered 
mortar, and jewels of gold are degraded to a 
swine's snout. 

Underneath all wars and convulsions, under- 
neath all forms of government and all social insti- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 287 

tutions, it seems to me that the relations between 
man and woman are the granite formation upon 
which the whole world rests. Society will be 
elevated only just so fast and so far as these rela- 
tions become what God intended them to be. 
Monarchies, republics, democracies, may have their 
benefits and their partisans, but the family is the 
foundation of country. I said "it seems to me" 
so. I have been charged with being sometimes 
too positive in my opinions. It may have been a 
youthful fault, but I long since corrected it. I 
should now suggest rather than affirm the equality 
between the angles of a triangle and two right 
angles. I am open to conviction on the subject 
of the multiplication-table ; but on this point my 
feet are fixed, and, as my Puritan ancestors were 
wont to sing, somewhat nasally perhaps, but with 
hand on sword, — 

" Let mountains from their seats be hurled 
Down to the deep, and buried there, 
Convulsions shake the solid world. 
My faith shall never yield to fear." 

All other influences are fitful and fragmentary : 
the home influence alone is steady and sufficient, 
and the home influence depends upon the relations 
between father and mother. Unless there is on 
both sides respect first, and then love, such love as 
brings an all-embracing sympathy, and so an outer 
and inner harmony, — harmony between life and 
its laws and harmony between heart and heart, — 



288 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

the child's head will be pillowed upon discord, 
his cradle will be rocked by restlessness, and 
his character can hardly fail to be unsymmetrical. 
We have all seen the wickedness of man, that 
it is great in the earth ; but why should it not 
be, when he is conceived in sin and shapen in 
iniquity ; when his plastic soul is moulded amid 
jarring elements, and the voices that fall upon 
his infant ear — voices that should be modulated 
only to tenderness and love, and all the sweet and 
endearing qualities — are sharpened by coldness, 
embittered by disappointment, shrill through un- 
remitting toil and rough with sordid ambitions? 
I only wonder that children bred up in such uncon- 
genial homes come to be so much men and women 
as they are. No outbreak of treachery or turpitude 
astonishes me, when I remember the discordant cir- 
cumstances into the midst of which the baby-soul 
was born. The only astonishment is, that every 
soul tends so strongly towards its original type as to 
have even an outer seeming of virtue. I wonder 
that, when the twig is so ruthlessly and persistently 
bent, the tree should reach up ever so crookedly 
towards heaven. Kind Nature takes her poor 
warped little ones, and with gentle, impercep- 
tible hand touches them to a grace and soft- 
ness which we have no right to expect, but to 
neyer that divine, grace, that ineffable sweetness, 
of which the human soul is capable, and to which 
in its highest moods it ever yearns. O, if this 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 289 

one truth could be imprinted upon this age, — 
the one truth that the regeneration of the world is 
to come through love, — what hope could one not 
see for the future ! God so loved the world that 
he gave his only begotten Son, and henceforth 
there is no more offering for sin. It only remains 
for us to enter into the holiest by this new and 
living way which he hath consecrated for us. The 
offering of Divine love is complete. Let human 
love come in to do its part, and the human soul 
shall be sanctified from its birth. When clamor 
and wrath and evil-speaking and evil-feeling are 
banished from the household hearth, murder and 
plunder and lust will fly from the public ways. 
When the child is the child of mutual love and 
trust and reverence and wisdom, he will never 
belie his parentage. 

We give to the dead their honors, — meet hom- 
age for the dust that shrined a soul. All passion 
is hushed, all pettiness vanishes in the presence of 
the dread mystery. But there is a mystery more 
dread, a mystery to which death is but as the 
sunshine for clearness, — the only sunshine which 
lights up its hidden labyrinths. It is the inexpli- 
cable secret of life. Fear not before the power 
which kills the body, but is not able to kill the soul. 
Stand in awe before that Power which can evoke 
both soul and body from nothingness into everlast- 
ing life. Death does but mark the accomplishment 
of one stage in a journey, with whose inception we 
13 s 



290 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

had nothing to do. It is but a necessary change 
of carriage at some relay-house, — an involuntary 
and inevitable event in which we are but interested 
spectators or passive participants. But whether 
the Spirit shall set out on its journey at all, and 
what shall be the manner of its going, what its 
sustenance by the way, and what the light upon 
its path, — these are matters for concern ; for these 
involve the weightiest responsibilities w^hich man 
can bear. To fashion an infinite soul and send it 
forth upon an infinite career, — infinite suscepti- 
bilities laid open to the touch of infinite sorrow, — 
oh ! to him who has ever faced the facts of being, 
— not death, not death, but this irrevocable gift of 
life, is the one solemnity, the awful sacrament ! 

You will say that you believe all this now, but 
you do not believe it. You agree to it in a certain 
sentimental Pickwickian sense, but you do not 
hold it as a living truth. You will assent to all 
that is said of the importance of the family, and 
then go straightway and give your chief time, 
thought, ingenuity, to your farms and your mer- 
chandise. What men really believe in is making 
money, not making true men and women. They 
believe that the greatness of a nation consists in its 
much land and gold and machinery and ability to 
browbeat another nation, not in the incorrupti- 
bility of its citizens. Wealth and fame, pui'ple and 
fine linen and sumptuous fare, brute force of intel- 
lect, position, and power, one or another or all 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 291 

forms of self-indulgence, — these, not purity, love, 
content, aspiration, and hearty good-will,, they take 
to constitute blessedness. What a man gives his 
life to, what he will attend to with his own eyes 
and mind, and will not trust to any other person, 
that he believes in. Any amount of fulsome 
adulation may be poured out upon the womanly 
in nature, but one particle of true reverence, one 
single award of rightful freedom, is worth it all. 
Surely, if you could but see how the land is as the 
garden of Eden before you, and around you a des- 
olate wilderness, you would suffer yourselves to 
be charmed into its ways of pleasantness and its 
paths of peace. You do not know the beautiful 
capacities which this earth, this very sin-stained, 
death-struck earth, bears in its redeemed bosom. 
Where sin abounds to sorrow, grace may much 
more abound to peace. Through the wonder of 
the Divine redemption there is possible for us a 
new heaven and a new earth, wherein righteous- 
ness shall dwell, and always and everywhere right- 
eousness and peace kiss each other. You sing the 
praises of woman, but you do not begin to dream 
of the loveliness, the blessedness, the beneficence 
of which she is capable. You extol her in song 
and story, but with your life you will not suffer 
women to be womanly. You are so evil, and you 
decree so much evil, that, alas ! a woman wakes to 
conscious life, and is not free to follow the bent of 
her nature ; she must expend all her energies in 



292 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

clearing a breathing-space. O, you do a fearful 
wrong in»this, and you endure a fearful wrong. 
For do you think the work is for woman alone ? 
Do you think there is any such thing as a " woman 
question " that is not also a man question ? Do 
you not know, that 

" Laws of changeless justice bind 
Oppressor with oppressed, 
And, close as sin and suffering joined. 
We march to fate abreast " 1 

The first shock of penalty for transgression falls 
upon woman, but sure and swift as the lightning 
it passes on to man. Every measure that keeps 
woman down keeps man down. Every jot taken 
from woman's joy is so much taken from man. 
All his wrong-thinking and wrong-doing that bears 
so heavily upon her bears down upon himself with 
equal weight. Action and reaction are not only 
inevitable, but constant. Every small or great im- 
provement in woman's condition elevates society, 
and society is only men and women. If men per- 
sist in alternate or in combined scorn and flattery, 
and will not do justly, the sorrow as well as the 
shame is theirs, and both are instantaneous. 

We are told of the Persian bird Juftak, which 
has only one wing. On the wingless side the male 
has a hook and the female a ring, and when 
fastened together, and only when fastened together, 
can they fly. The human race is that Persian 
bird, the Juftak. When man and woman unite. 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 293 

they may soar skyward, scorners of the ground, 
but so long as man refuses God's help proffered in 
woman, he and she must alike grub on the earth. 
If he will have her minister only to the wants of 
his lower nature, his higher nature as well as hers 
shall be forever pinioned. 

You may possibly suspect that I have some- 
times insinuated a greater moral obliquity on the 
part of man than on that of woman ; and, indeed, I 
believe you are right. But the greater obliquity 
which I attribute to him is the result of his train- 
ing, not an attribute of his nature. I once held 
the contrary opinion, but it is not tenable. Man 
is made in the image of God, and one part of God 
cannot be better than another. If men were not 
capable of being nobler than their ordinary life 
exhibits them, I should think this war an especial 
providence of God in other respects than are 
usually mentioned. But look at the developments 
which this very war has made. Is fortitude in 
pain, as many have asserted, a womanly attribute ? 
But what fortitude under pain has been shown by 
our soldiers on the battle-field and in hospital ! 
Torn with ghastly wounds, tortured with thirst, 
weak from loss of blood and lack of food, untended 
and unconsoled ; or w^asting away in the crowded 
hospital week after week and month after month, 
longing for home while dying for country; or 
scarred, maimed, and disabled for life ; yet utter- 
ing no word of complaint, breathing no murpaur 



294 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

of impatience, making a sport of pain, grateful for 
every word and touch and look and thought of 
tenderness, when a nation's tenderness is their just 
due, and glad all through that they have been able 
to fight for the beloved land, — is fortitude indeed 
only a womanly virtue? Or is it that gentleness 
and self-sacrifice are pure womanly, as is so often 
maintained ? Look through the same battle-fields 
and hospitals ; see men waiting upon men with the 
indescribable gentleness of compassion and pure 
sympathy ; see them risking life to save a wounded 
comrade ; see them passing day and night from 
cot to cot, to bathe the fevered brow, to moisten 
the parched lip, to soothe the restless mind, to re- 
ceive the last message of love, and speed the part- 
ing soul. See the wounded man bidding the 
surgeon pass him by to heal the sorer hurts of his 
neighbor, or putting the canteen from his own lips 
to the paler lips beside him, till you shall take 
every soldier to be a Sidney. Rough men they 
may be or polished, rudely or delicately nurtured, 
trained to every accomplishment or only born 
into the world, but everywhere you shall look on 
such high heroic gentleness and thoughtfulness 
and patience and self-abnegation as make the 
courage of onset seem in comparison but a low, 
brute virtue. O blood-red blossoms of war, with 
your heart of fire, deeper than glow and crimson 
you unfold the white lilies of Christ ! 

Who shall show us any good that cannot be 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 2d 5 

predicated of the nature which, stunted and twisted 
from the beginning, can yet bring forth such heav- 
enly fruit ? If God can work in man so to will 
and to do, is it for woman to stand aside and say, 
" I am holier than thou " ? 

But though the exigencies of war make more 
obvious the fine possibihties of men, it does not 
need a continent in deadly strife to indicate their 
existence. There are sacred hours in every life 
when that which is of the earth is held in abey- 
ance and celestial influences reign. No man, 
perhaps, has ever lived who has not had his better 
moments, — moments when the spirit of God moved 
upon the turbid waters of his soul and brought 
light out of darkness and beauty from chaos : 
silent moments it may be, and solitary, or hallowed 
with a companionship dearer even than solitude ; 
moments w^hen helplessness, loveliness, innocence, 
or suffering thrilled him to the depths with pity 
and tenderness, with indignation or with adora- 
tion. Have you never seen the sweetest ties ex- 
isting between father and daughter, or brother and 
younger sister, when the wife has been removed 
by death, or, through some fatal fault, is no mother 
to her child ? What love, what devotion, what 
watchful care, what sympathy, what strength of 
attachment ! The little unmothered daughter calls 
out all the motherhood in the great, brawny man, 
and they walk hand in hand, blest with a great 
content. " 'T is the old sweet mythos," — the 
infant nourished at the father's breast. 



296 A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 

Every-day occurrences reveal in men traits of 
disinterestedness, consideration, all Christian virtues 
and graces. My heart misgives me when I think 
of it all, — their loving-kindness, their forbearance, 
their unstinted service, their integrity ; and of the 
not sufficiently unfrequent instances in which wo- 
men, by fretfulness, folly, or selfishness, irritate 
and alienate the noble heart which they ought to 
prize above rubies. I have not hitherto made a 
single irrelevant remark, and I will therefore in- 
dulge in the luxury of one now. It is this : Con- 
sidering how few good husbands there are in the 
world, and how many good women there are who 
would have been to them a crown .of glory and a 
royal diadem, had the coronation but been effected, 
but who, instead, are losing all their pure gems 
down the dark, unfathomed caves of some bad 
man's ' heart, — considering this, I account that 
woman to whom has been allotted a good husband, 
and who can do no better than spoil him and his 
happiness by her own misbehavior, guilty, if not of 
the unpardonable sin, at least of the unpardonable 
stupidity. If it were relevant, I could easily make 
out a long list of 'charges against women, and 
of excellences to be set down to the credit of 
men. But women have been stoned to death, or 
at least to coma, with charges already ; and when 
you would extricate a wagon from a slough, you 
put your shoulder first and heaviest to the wheel 
that is deepest in the mud, — especially if the 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 297 

other wheel would hardly be in at all, unless 
tins one had pulled it in ! I can understand and 
have great consideration towards those men who, 
gentle, faithful, and true themselves, possibly dil^- 
heartened by long companionship with a capricious, 
tyrannical woman, should fail to acquiesce with 
any heartiness in the truth of the views which I 
have advanced. Their experience is of long-suffer- 
ing men and long-afflicting women, and they can 
hardly be expected to entertain with enthusiasm a 
statement w^hich has perhaps no bearing upon their 
position. Still, when facts meet facts, the argument 
is always on the side of the heaviest battalions. It 
is the rule that generalizes, exceptions only modify. 
There is another circumstance which makes 
strongly against any assertion of man's necessary 
moral inferiority to woman. The manly ideal is 
often one to which no woman takes exception. In 
poetry and romance, men, as well as women, paint 
heroes; and I hold that no one can project from 
his imagination a better character than he is him- 
self capable of attaining. He can be all that he 
can portray. The stream through his pen can rise 
no higher than the fountain in his heart, and out 
of the heart are the issues of life which he may 
keep as pure and clear as poesy. It was no wo- 
man's hand which limned the grand, sad face of 
that " good king," who 

" Was first of all the kings who drew 
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all 
The realms together under me, their Head, 
13 # 



298 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

In that fair order of my Table Round, 

A glorious company, the flower of men. 

To serve as model for the mighty world, 

And be the fair beginning of a time. 

I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 

To reverence the King, as if he were 

Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, 

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 

To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 

To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 

To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. 

To love one maiden only, cleave to her. 

And worship her by years of noble deeds, 

Until they won her ; for indeed I knew 

Of no more subtle master under heaven 

Than is the maiden passion for a maid, 

Not only to keep down the base in man. 

But teach high thought, and amiable words 

And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 

And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 

Another fact must also be allowed. Individual 
men are often better than their principles. Men 
who will, in cold blood, avow sentiments really 
atrocious, will, in the presence of a command- 
ing female influence, straighten up to its require- 
ments and carry themselves tolerably well ; but 
with their lips they will all the while deny the 
power which their lives obey. Many a man who 
rails at strong-minded women, female education, 
and petticoat government, who professes to believe 
only in stocking-mending, love, and cookery, will 
be utterly, though unconsciously, plastic to the 
hand of a truly strong-minded, educated, and con- 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 299 

trolling woman. He does not know it ; power 
in its highest action works ever imperceptibly. 
Nevertheless, it is there, and he follows it. His 
wrong opinions help to strengthen the citadel of 
evil, but himself is less bad than he seems. This 
ought to be remembered when inquisition is made. 
It would be easy to multiply evidence, but it is 
not necessary. Enough has been produced to show 
that men have evinced the highest not only of 
those qualities which belong to their own sex, but 
those which are usually considered the prerogative 
of the other. And what men have done man may 
do. Life can be as lovely as its best moods. In 
vino Veritas^ said Roman philosophy, and builded 
better than it knew. In the wine of love is the 
truth of life. As pure, as thoughtful, as disinter- 
ested, as helpful, as manly as is the lover can the 
husband be. What the poet sings, that the man 
should live. A race that has attained a temporary 
exaltation can attain a permanent exaltation. If 
one man has bent to the stern decree of duty, 

knowing 

"All 

Life needs for life is possible to will/* 
all men can compass self-control. I am filled with 
indignation when I see the low standard accepted 
for man's due measurement. Well may he ex- 
claim, in sad, despairing reproach, — 

" Men have burnt my house, 
Maligned mj motives, — but not one, I swear. 
Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has," 



300 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

or this Romney or Sir Blaise, who forbids me ac- 
cess to the holy place, denies me power to lead a 
saintly life. Why, it is because men can be good 
that we reproach them. It is because we do see 
in them hints of dormant excellences that w^e con- 
sider it worth while to keep them in a state of agi- 
tation. If they must be as bad as their badnesses, 
there is only one verdict: He is joined to idols ; 
let him alone. But, beloved, I am persuaded bet- 
ter things of you, and things that accompany sal- 
vation, though I thus speak. What has been is of 
no fatal import. What has been only shows the 
ti'ack of error; now w^e may follow the footsteps 
of truth. The old world is a world masculinized; 
a world of rugged, brawny, male muscularity, but 
slightly and partially softened by feminine touch. 
Man was satisfied that woman in the beginning 
should be taken out of him, and he has ever since 
been trying to grope his way alone, — with what 
success ages of blunder and blood bear terrible 
w^itness. Now, seeing that his defeminization has 
failed, let him compass the spiritual restoration of 
her who was physically- separated from him, that 
the twain may become one perfect being, and re- 
assume supreme dominion. The power lies ready 
to his hand. Eve was never wholly torn away. 
Deep within every heart lies the slumbering Prin- 
cess still. A hundred years and many another 
hundred have gone by, and round her palace-wall, 
round her star-broidered coverlet, her gold-fringed 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 801 

pillow, and her jet-black hair, the hedge has wo- 
ven its ivies and woodbine, thorns and mistletoes. 
Burr and brake and brier, close-matted, seem to 
refuse approach, and even to deny existence, but 
ever and anon above their surly barricade gleams 
in some evening sun the topmost palace spires, 
and we know that the fated Fairy Prince shall 
come, and, guided by the magic music in his heart, 
shall find that quiet chamber ; reverently, on 
bended knee, shall touch the tranced lips, and — 
lo ! thought and time are born again, and it is a 
new world which was the old. 

Men, notwithstanding their high privilege, re- 
main in their low estate, — partly because they 
are not enlightened out of it. They do evil, not 
knowing what they do. Like all despots,^ they 
have dealt more in adulation than in truth. They 
have heard from women the voice of flattery, the 
cry of entreaty, the wail of helpless pain, the im- 
potent watchword of insurrection ; but they have 
had small opportunity to benefit by the careful 
analysis of character, the accurate delineation and 
just rebuke of faults, and the calm, judicious, af- 
fectionate counsel which comes from a wise and 
faithful friend — like me ! Women may stand 
before them, sweet, trusting creatures, "just as 
high as their hearts," to be schooled into devotion 
and amiable submission. They may float denii- 
goddesses in some incomprehensible ether above 
the clouds, and receive incense and adoration. 



302 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

But for the ministering angel to turn into an accus- 
ing angel, for the lectured to rise and lay down 
the law to lecturers, is a thing whicji was never 
dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy. 

" A man 
May call a white-browed girl Dian, 
But likes not to be turned upon 
And nicknamed young Endymion." 

Nor, indeed, is it any more grateful to Dian than 
to Endymion. To confront man on his throne 
with the stern, dispassionate charge, "Thou art 
inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that 
judgest ; for wherein thou judgest another, thou 
condemnest thyself; and thinkest thou this, O 
man, that thou shalt escape the judgment of 
God ? " seems to woman so formidable a thing, 
that very few have had the courage to attempt it. 
Many are so overborne with toil, disappointment, 
and faintness, that they have no heart for it. It is 
easier to suffer than to attempt remedy. They 
feel, in the lowest depths of their consciousness, 

" What all their weeping will not let them say, 
And yet what women cannot say at all 
But weeping bitterly." 

But they remain silent, and the case goes by de- 
fault. There is, besides, a dread of personal con- 
sequences. Popular judgment is very much given 
to attributing general statements to private ex- 
perience. If a woman is married, her adverse 
opinions are likely to be charged with implying 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 303 

conjugal discontent. If she is not married, they 
spring from failure and envy, and, shrinking from 
such opprobrium, the few women who see talk 
the matter over among themselves, and that is the 
end of it. There is also a natural reluctance to 
suggest that which men should do or be spontane- 
ously, and there is a deeper reluctance, instinc- 
tive, indefinite, inexplicable. 

The result is, that men go on in sin, seemingly 
unconscious that it is sin. They have been pur- 
suing one course all their life, meeting obstacles, 
enduring fatigue, losing patience, but incapable of 
perceiving that they are in the wrong path until 
the fact is pointed out to them. They do not even 
understand the nomenclature of the science of right 
living. Speak of cherishing a departed friend, and 
they will descant on the absurdity of going about 
moaning and weeping all your days. They attach 
no meaning to life-long tenderness but life-long 
namby-pamby ism, something excusable in youth 
and " courting," but savoring strongly of weak- 
ness of character after the honeymoon has waned. 
Put before them the general allegation of selfish- 
ness, indifference, cruelty, and they will deny 
it with vehemence. Of course. Without such 
denial they could have no excuse. Moral igno- 
rance alone saves them from utter condemna- 
tion. If they sinned wittingly, — if they said, 
*'Yes, I am cold and hard and hateful to my 
wife, neglectful of my children, I give grudg- 



304 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

ingly money barely sufficient for the necessities 
of life, or I provide for my wife every luxury, 
but have no sympathy or companionship for h^r," 
— if men said or could say this, even to them- 
selves, they would be — not men, but demons. 
They are not demons, but men, capable of gener- 
osity, devotion, and self-sacrifice. If they knew 
that they were cruel, outrageous, intolerable in 
their most intimate relations, they would at once 
cease to be so, and begin to become everything 
that could be desired. More than this, I have so 
great faith in the noble possibiHties of men, I 
believe they have so strong an inward bias towards 
holiness, that they will welcome the friendly hand 
which sets their iniquities before them. They will 
hear the sad story with amazement, and say one to 
another : " Who can understand his errors ? A 
brutish man knoweth not ; neither doth a fool un- 
derstand this. We have sinned with our fathers, 
we have committed iniquity, we have done wick- 
edly. So foolish was I and ignorant ; I was as a 
beast. But now I will behave myself wisely in a 
perfect way. I will walk within my house with a 
perfect heart." And, when men shall have grown 
good, there will be no further complaint of women. 
To Lavater's list of impossible good women, Blake, 
the " mad painter," appends, " Let the men do 
their duty, and the women will be such wonders : 
the female life lives from the life of the male." 
There are exceptions, but in the mass women are 



A NEW ATMOSPHERE, 305 

not independent of received opinions, nor strong 
enough to front prejudice and mould society, or 
where they cannot mould it, to guide their own 
Hves in its very spite. Therefore opinion needs 
to be right, prejudice removed, and society reno- 
vated ; and men must do it. Women are generally 
said to make society. It is not so. Men make 
women, and men and women together make soci- 
ety. Men are the rocky stratum, women the soil 
which covers it. Men determine the outline, the 
level, the general character ; women give the 
curves, the bloom, the grace. Rear your hills 
and lay your valleys, and the land shall speedily 
flow with milk and honey ; but if you will upheave 
mountains and spread deserts, you may expect 
scant herbage on the one and but scattered oases 
on the other. 

I cannot, of course, pronounce that it is absolutely 
impossible for woman to attain a truer life without 
man's co-operation. The Most High ruleth in the 
kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he 
will. What revolution may await us in the future 
no one knows. Fired by what impulse woman 
may throw off* the stupor which has enthralled her 
so long, array herself in her beautiful garments 
and mount upward to the heavenly heights, whose 
air alone her spirit pants to breathe, whose paths 
alone her feet are framed to tread, I do not 
know. Yet blessed as is that day, come when and 
how it will, I would it were ushered in by a peace- 



806 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

fill dawn. Better that woman should take her 
place alone, moved by an ineffable disdain, than 
that she should remain forever in her low estate. 
Better still that man and woman should go to- 
gether, he bringing his sturdy strength to shorten, 
she lending her manifold grace to lighten, the path 
that leads up thither ; and both, following the still, 
small voice of love, shall find no roughness, shall 
feel no grief, shall fear no evil, but shall walk 
softly till the end come, and shall rest in the peace 
of the beloved. 




L'ENVOI. 




SWEET my friend, hastening with 
happy steps to your marriage-morn, 
O my poet, singing under your haw- 
thorn-tree the song that never can 
grow old, am I then a bird of evil omen ? Does 
it thunder towards the left as I pass by? Be not 
so credulous. I take no lustre from the golden- 
bright day that lies half-hidden under the mild 
haze of September: but I would that fair day's 
light should shine as the brightness of the firma- 
ment for ever and ever. I breathe no blight upon 
the hawthorn, no discord to the song ; but I 
would the bloom of the one and the melody of 
the other might never die away. Dream, O maid- 
en ! your pleasant dreams ; sing, O poet ! your 
happy songs ; but while the flush of the sunrise 
is yet ruddy on your brows, think it not strange 
that I leave your sweet light and go down to 
them who are sitting in the region and shadow 
of death. 

Have I written this book ? It is but the voice 



308 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 

of a thousand aching hearts. Ten thousand 
dreary hves are wrought into its pages. It is 
the sorrow of just such hearts as yours, the dis- 
appointment of just such hopes, that have found 
a recard here. The gloom that gathers on these 
leaves is gloom that hangs over paths just as fair 
as yours in their glad beginning. I feast my eyes 
on the beautiful temple of your promise, and I 
pray that you may go no more out of it forever ; 
but I cannot forget that all mv life I have seen 
highway and byway strewn with the fragments of 
temples which in their majesty of completeness 
must have been just as marvellous as yours. And 
being fully persuaded in my own mind that there is 
a way whereby the wondrous edifice may be made 
as enduring as it is brilliant, shall I not proclaim 
it throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants 
thereof, that the trumpet of the jubilee may sound? 
You shall not make the darkness your pavilion, 
because the world is hung with gloom ; but 
neither shall you reckon it offence, if I cannot 
wholly rejoice in your light for thinking of the 
great multitudes who are sitting in a darkness 
which may be felt. To-day is lost, but it is not 
too late for the morrow. Wasted life can never 
be restored ; — ^ 

" Though every summer green the plain, 
This harvest cannot bloom again." 

Only beyond the grave can a new life spring into 
beauty, and the death of this be swallowed up in 



A NEW ATMOSPHE^RE. 309 

victory. But for the lives that have not yet been 
lavished, for the " poor little maidens " of great- 
hearted Dr. Luther, for gentle Magdalenchen, 
fiery young Lenore, merry Beatrice, skipping along 
their separate paths, each to her unknown wo- 
manhood, or walking already through its shadowy 
ways, — how earnestly for them do we covet the 
best gift ! But if they fail of this, shall not one 
show them how to live worthily without it? Shall 
not one bid them see how poor and false and mean 
is everything which offers itself instead ; how sad 
were the exchange of an ideal good for a base re- 
ality; how fatal the disaster when the sacred torch 
pales before a grosser flame ? So through these 
summer days, my little maid, when all sweet 
summer sounds but echo to you the music of one 
low voice, add to the happy thought within your 
heart this happiest thought of all: There shall 
come a day when the same sky that bends in 
blessing above your head shall bend, — no cloud 
to darken, but only to adorn, no fogs to hide, but 
only mist-wreaths to deck its blue, — soft, serene, 
and beautiful, above an earth purified by the same 
love which makes to you all things pure. Through 
that new atmosphere, my poet, the tuneful voices 
of your song shall go, wakening all the woods 
to melody, summoning shy response from the 
ever-charmed hills, ringing out over the listening 
waters, giving and gathering sweetness wherever 
a human heart throbs ; till earth, all a-quiver with 



310 



A TSTEW ATMOSPHERE, 



the harmony, shall lift from the dust her long- 
neglected lyre, sweep once more to her place 
among the stars, and raise again her happy voice 
in the unforgotten music of the spheres. 




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Ticknor and Fields. 13 



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TicJcnor and Fields. 15 



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Tichnor and Fields. 17 



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TicknoT and Fields, 19 



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Irving' s Sketch-Book, $ 1.50. 



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are now published : — 

Longfellow^s Poems. 2 vols. $ 4.00. 
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The following will shortly be issued : — 

Saxe's Poems. 1 vol. $ 2.00. 
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Adelaide Procter's Poems. 1 vol. $ 2.00. 



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